NPR,4/29/19: This Week, NASA Is Pretending An Asteroid Is On Its Way To Smack The Earth
QuoteThe giant asteroid is in a horrible orbit and has a 1% chance of striking the Earth in just eight years. And — thank goodness — it doesn't really exist.
It's a fictitious asteroid that's the focus of a realistic exercise devised for scientists and engineers from around the world who are attending the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference being held this week external of Washington, and D.
C.
A genuine asteroid of this size,should it ever hit the planet, could wipe out an entire city. ...
This time around, and the pretend asteroid is around 300 to 1000 feet across,and was spotted around 35 million miles absent. What's known about its fake trajectory indicates that it has a 1 percent chance of hitting our planet in 2027. ...
"The asteroid is not in a convenient orbit at all. ... It's not like one of these asteroids that we go to with our science missions, where you get to pick a kind asteroid that's easy to get to. In planetary defense, or the asteroid picks you."...
Source: thesurvivalpodcast.com