(ORDO NEWS) — Astronaut Paolo Nespoli said that at the moment there are more than a million asteroids in space, which at any moment may collide with our planet. He believes that something needs to be done to protect the Earth right now, otherwise the catastrophe cannot be avoided in the future.
Dinosaurs became extinct about 66 million years ago when an asteroid about 10 miles in diameter crashed into Earth. Of course, humanity is more prepared for a collision than animals, but there is still much to be done.
The Italian astronaut also added that most of the asteroids are small enough, but they can harm the planet. It is worth noting that to date, NASA has made tremendous strides in looking for near-Earth objects in time, the size of which exceeds one kilometer. At the same time, a lot of asteroids, which can be called potentially dangerous, are over a kilometer in diameter. In addition, there are about 10% of asteroids that pose a direct threat to Earth, and most of which have not been detected until today.
The probability of a collision of the Earth with an asteroid is very small, but if this happens, then humanity may die. For example, in 2013 a meteor exploded in Chelyabinsk with a diameter of 20 meters. This caused damage not only to buildings, but also to over 1000 people. Experts did not expect anything like this, so after this situation they began to fear that in the future the asteroid would have a much larger size, which could lead to a real disaster.
Today, NASA is studying the asteroid Bennu, which reaches 500 meters in diameter.
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