Can Earth Avoid Killer Space Rocks?

An asteroid larger than Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, will pass within 1.2 million miles of Earth on Thursday, January 20.
Stephen Hawking, in his final book Brief Answers to the Big Questions, considered an asteroid collision to be the biggest threat to the planet.
At this point, we are as well prepared as dinosaurs were when a 10-km wide asteroid hit the planet 65 million years ago, notes Kumar Abishek.

Spoiler alert! In Netflix's Don't Look Up, Earth gets destroyed by Comet Dibiasky and everyone is killed but the villains.

Also in the movie, two Michigan State University astronomers -- PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and Professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) -- upon discovering the 'planet-killing' comet try to rally public, political, and scientific opinion in support of a Nasa/global mission to deflect the space rock.

On the other hand, US President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) and the billionaire chief executive of tech company BASH, Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), decry alarmism and advocate mining it for trillions of dollars worth of rare-Earth elements.

Efforts of both protagonists and antagonists fail, thus leaving the planet doomed.

I won't discuss how director Adam McKay conceived of Don't Look Up in a bid to render the absurdity of our collective response to global warming.

I look to explain how near or far humanity is from either ducking such an extraterrestrial threat or making the most of its riches.

Just last month, a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) -- 4660 Nereus -- whizzed past our planet. This space rock has been classified as 'potentially hazardous' and measures 330 m across.

On the other hand, it is estimated to be containing nearly $5 billion worth of iron, cobalt, and nickel.

'... it will be flying only 1.2 million km from Earth in February 2060,' Franck Marchis, chief science officer for Unistellar, which makes digital telescopes, was quoted as saying by Forbes. And that may allow a space mining opportunity.

'As a regular guest of our planet, Nereus could play a significant role in the future of space exploration, providing key resources.'

But mining asteroids like Nereus for iron may not be viable in the nascent stages of space mining, even as such bodies later will help humanity build settlements beyond Earth.

Probably, space mining will first start for precious or rare-Earth metals, even as viability of such a project is doubtful.

Humans have been experimenting with the idea of space mining for several decades. But it was only in 2010 that Japan's Hayabusa returned to Earth after successfully touching down on and collecting samples from an NEA, 25143 Itokawa, in 2005. The mission was launched in 2003.

In 2020, Nasa's OSIRIS-REx -- launched in 2016 -- landed on Bennu and collected a sample. It is expected to return next year.

Meanwhile, many space mining companies, such as Planetary Resources, have popped up.

Planetary Resources -- now acquired by ConsenSys (a blockchain venture) -- has already launched several mini-satellites to test several of its patents.

Other firms like Asteroid Mining Corporation (the UK) or Trans Astronautica Corporation (the US), though far from their goal, are attracting millions of dollars in private investments.

China's Origin Space Technology last year launched the NEO-1, a spacecraft dedicated to the mining of space resources.

According to the database of Asterank -- a Web site that estimates the value of various asteroids -- a number of these extra-terrestrial bodies are valued at over $100 trillion, but in terms of cost-effectiveness, the most profitable is Ryugu, with a projected value of $82.76 billion and a profit of $30.08 billion.

Another ideal target is Ceres -- a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt which experts think can become the transport hub for the future asteroid mining infrastructure, allowing transfer of mineral resources to Mars, the Moon, and Earth.

Also, there is the question of regulation.

Though the Outer Space Treaty debars any sovereign right over extraterrestrial realty, it is silent on private ownership.

Besides, the US's SPACE Act of 2015 facilitates private development of space resources and the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act recognises the right of American citizens to own space resources they obtain.

In 2017, Luxembourg became the first European nation to pass a law allowing firms the ownership of any resources they extract from space.

Even as asteroid mining for commercial purposes has found a lot of traction, we have only taken baby steps in the direction of deflecting Earth-killer space rocks.

Only in November last year, Nasa launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, which is slated to crash into the minor-planet moon Dimorphos of binary asteroid Didymos to assess the potential of a spacecraft impact to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

Nasa's Lindley Johnson in his book End Times wrote: 'In the order of things people should be worried about, Near-Earth Objects isn't highest on the list... But it does have the potential to be the most devastating natural disaster known to man.'

Stephen Hawking, in his final book Brief Answers to the Big Questions, considered an asteroid collision to be the biggest threat to the planet.

In May 2021, based on a simulated exercise, Nasa astronomers reported that 5 to 10 years of preparation may be needed to avoid a virtual impactor.

So at this point, we are as well prepared as dinosaurs were when a 10-km wide asteroid hit the planet 65 million years ago.

But maybe, all we need is the masochistic oil driller Bruce Willis from the 1998 film Armageddon!

Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com