There's no need to panic; NASA and FEMA have a plan to respond to a potential asteroid collision:
It's a scary scenario: an asteroid headed for Earth, just four years away from slamming into our home planet. It may be too short a span to plan an asteroid-deflection mission, but it's long enough to present very different challenges from those of a more typical crisis, like a hurricane or earthquake.
NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came together Oct. 25 to plan a response to such a hypothetical event. In a "tabletop exercise," a kind of ongoing simulation, the two agencies tested how they would work together to evaluate the threat, prevent panic and protect as many people as possible from the deadly collision.
"It's not a matter of if, but when, we will deal with such a situation," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's Science Mission Directorate's new associate administrator, said in a statement. "But unlike any other time in our history, we now have the ability to respond to an impact threat through continued observations, predictions, response planning and mitigation."
Also at JPL.
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An asteroid with the potential to harm thousands of Earthlings was detected just two days before it passed by Earth:
A smallish asteroid zoomed past Earth this morning (Jan. 9), just two days after scientists first spotted the space rock. The asteroid, known as 2017 AG13, flew by our planet at just half the distance from Earth to the moon today at 7:47 a.m. EST (1247 GMT). (On average, the moon lies about 239,000 miles, or 385,000 kilometers, from Earth.) You can learn more about today's flyby in this video of asteroid 2017 AG13 from Slooh.com, which includes details on the space rock from Slooh Community Observatory astronomer Eric Edelman.
2017 AG13 is thought to be between 36 and 111 feet (11 to 34 meters) wide, according to astronomers at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For perspective, the object that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, injuring more than 1,000 people, was thought to be about 65 feet (20 m) wide.
See also: NASA Formalizes Planetary Defense Coordination Office to Track Asteroids
NASA and FEMA Conduct Asteroid Threat Response Exercise
NASA Office to Coordinate Asteroid Detection, Hazard Mitigation
2012 TC4 has passed by Earth:
2012 TC4 is estimated to be 45 to 100 feet (15 to 30 meters) in size. Orbit prediction experts say the asteroid poses no risk of impact with Earth. Nonetheless, its close approach to Earth is an opportunity to test the ability of a growing global observing network to communicate and coordinate their optical and radar observations in a real scenario.
This asteroid was discovered by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) on Hawaii back in 2012. Pan-STARRS conducts a near-Earth object (NEO) survey funded by NASA's NEO Observations Program, a key element of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. However, 2012 TC4 traveled out of the range of asteroid-tracking telescopes shortly after it was discovered.
Based on the observations they were able to make in 2012, asteroid trackers predicted that it should come back into view in the fall of 2017. Observers with the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory were the first to recapture 2012 TC4, in late July 2017, using one of their large 8-meter aperture telescopes. Since then, observers around the world have been tracking the object as it approaches Earth and reporting their observations to the Minor Planet Center.
This "test" of what has become a global asteroid-impact early-warning system is a volunteer project, conceived and organized by NASA-funded asteroid observers and supported by the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). As explained by Michael Kelley, program scientist and NASA PDCO lead for the TC4 observation campaign, "Asteroid trackers are using this flyby to test the worldwide asteroid detection and tracking network, assessing our capability to work together in response to finding a potential real asteroid-impact threat."
Previously: NASA Formalizes Planetary Defense Coordination Office to Track Asteroids
NASA and FEMA Conduct Asteroid Threat Response Exercise
Surprise Flyby of Asteroid on January 9, 2017
NASA to Redirect an Asteroid's Moon With Kinetic Impact
Asteroid 2012 TC4 Will Pass Close to Earth on October 12th
4.4 Kilometer Asteroid Safely Passes by Earth (two moons discovered)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 07 2016, @12:29PM
Isn't 4 years warning a little optimistic at current technology levels?
I mean, something very large is already being tracked and if it hits it makes quite a mess. On the other hand, something small enough not to be see but large enough to really ruin someones day isn't going to be "discovered" until it almost hits. So you can prep for total end of the world if something 100 miles across is incoming but at least you'll have centuries of warning, or something big enough to imitate multiple h-bomb impacts will not be seen until hours before it hits, maybe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @09:34AM
Given that either Trump or Hillary will be elected in under a day, they're going to have to up their disaster-planning schedule considerably...
(Score: 2) by seeprime on Monday November 07 2016, @01:57PM
FEMA will be incapable of taking care of survivors of a serious asteroid collision with earth, assuming that there is a functioning FEMA. Politics will screw up everything. Who will pay when there is no money available, should help be possible?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday November 07 2016, @04:58PM
I'm not an american, but with what i heard about the New Orleans fiasco, isn't FEMA most likely to try saving rich white people and basically ignore black people unless they have ooodles of cash?
Their plan is probably: rich white people move to the right: we'll call you heads, everyone else to the left: you're tails... now, let's flip a coin to see who gets to go to a safe place. Yes, this coin is a 2 headed one: what's wrong with that?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 07 2016, @07:56PM
I don't have a lot of confidence in FEMA. I've heard of several cases where they appear to have made things worse, and concentrated on preventing others from helping. I'm not sure they're always that bad, but they sure are sometimes. And now they appear to have been joined by "Homeland Security", which to me still sounds Nazi, and doesn't have much of a record of doing any good...though they've certainly done a lot of bad.
OTOH, this is probably just a PR puff piece, and doesn't really mean anything. I'm much more concerned about their preparations for a zombie attack, which to me looks like preparation against a citizen uprising.
That said, civil war is a really bad idea. The government has to be a lot worse than it is before that starts looking like a good idea. But why does it keep getting ready for one, and taking actions that appear to be deliberately provocative? It's as if some in government think that their goal is to make the government enough worse that it stops looking like a bad idea.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday November 07 2016, @02:31PM
We need Bruce Willis involved in a hare-brained last-minute scheme for appropriately dramatic purposes.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @02:53PM
NASA: We've detected an asteroid that will collide with us. Our best estimate says somewhere in a line between New York and Los Angeles for impact. Likely median point: Chicago. It has an estimated energy release of somewhere between the petajoule and exajoule range.
FEMA: Great. Don't tell anybody - we can't handle a response of that magnitude. We'll just get the privileged to the bunkers.
NASA: But we're a transparent organization. The data must be released by law.
FEMA: Here's your National Security Letter binding you to silence. Now shut up while we all fly to eastern hemisphere.
NASA: This will leak.
FEMA: OK. Well, let's get our plans activated to protect our own, then we will have PR flacks give the public meaningless preparedness information which amounts to "good luck and kiss your ass goodbye." Oh, and we'll saddle emergency reponders with lots of sexual harassment and MBA bullshit classes so that only those willing to stand at attention to us will be allowed to respond at all. After all, the only way to marshal resources is to use military command structures. This allows our critics to rightfully suggest that we're preparing to execute martial law and take over as the government in any actual national emergency, but also allows us to accuse those people of wearing tinfoil hats. Oh, and actually have ordered lots of ammunition and have lots of land ready to whatever purposes we want to use them for, but let's get the tinfoil hat crowd to put out lots of radar clutter about "camps" and "compounds" and "rounding people up."
FEMA: Now we're prepared.
PRESIDENT: Heckuva job, Brownie!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday November 07 2016, @04:08PM
I hope you're joking.
1. "Brownie" left FEMA a long time ago.
2. The guy who's currently running FEMA, Craig Fugate, has handled quite a few major emergencies (most recently, flooding in North Carolina) without massive embarrassment of himself. That probably has something to the fact that he started out as a firefighter/paramedic and worked his way up through the ranks of emergency management, and thus demonstrably knows what he's doing, rather than getting the job because he was a fundraiser for the president.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @11:02PM
Kidding? Yes, a little. More like a hyperbole rooted in truth.
Wait for the next election, when we haven't had an emergency for awhile and Hillary (or Donald) needs to pay off a key supporter with a cushy appointment.
For the most part, heads of Agencies don't matter for squat anyway when it comes down to the day-to-day gruntwork of the organization. When political appointees get any genuine progress done within the bureaucracy, it is a fluke.
Yes, operators make better directors generally, except when the operator can't make it as an operator and therefore gets political as a way of surviving. Not saying Fugate is that way at all. Just that credentials as an operator don't automatically transfer credibility... judging whether the appointee was a GOOD operator does.
Now, for the reality behind the fun:
* Running a tabletop exercise for an asteroid strike is a bit like running a tabletop exercise for alien first contact. Might be nice to establish basic working policy, but won't mean shit if an incident ever actually happens.
* FEMA, like any Federal Agency, first and foremost wants and wants to maintain power.
* It does indeed have bunkers for the National Command Leadership. It does indeed buy its' own ammunition reserves for disaster contingency, and it does indeed have large areas reserved for staging and other purposes.
* Its unified response plan is indeed based on military command-and-control structures. They state so, openly, noting that "it works."
* Any agency that expects to provide assistance in an emergency must recognize the primacy of FEMA or risk not only being denied service but denied entry into an emergency zone. Sometimes locals have fought this successfully.
* Any responder for mutual aid is expected to be trained and adhere to FEMA standards of the incident response system. Local/state agencies that don't play ball face risks of denied funding. (The origin of a local fire department traveling several states to provide assistance, only to find themselves tied up in sexual harassment classes instead of working in the field. Yes, some time ago, but it applies.)
* While military command-and-control structures do work outside of the military, it is completely unproven that they are the "best" way to coordinate assistance between diverse agencies and providers. To the contrary, the militarization of disaster response easily provokes distrust and resentment among the 'served' individuals. I'll trust organizations like Red Cross ahead of FEMA, thanks. (And yeah, RC does cooperate with FEMA. Because it must.) More importantly, I'll trust my local government ahead of any higher authority.... but the Integrated Response Plan virtually guarantees that if state or fed gets involved at all, it takes over the response. Which is completely fucked up, sorry.
* Unless their little exercised reached a point where they realized that their whole structure breaks down and they then consider, "What Then?" well, it wasn't a REAL exercise. Because asteroid strikes can VERY easily reach that potential. (And yes, Virginia, they can also be much smaller than that from a local disaster up to a 2-3 Tsar Bomba explosion. But until they know what point exhausts their response ability, they won't know when to tell people, "Nope, don't evacuate.")
In any kind of area-wide emergency, 90% of the ready.gov instructions basically fly out the window. Disasters and emergencies are fluid situations, and while those directions may start one on the road to preparedness, real life has a way of completely shitting all over one's finest made plans.
So kidding? Yeah. Up to a point. But only up to a point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 08 2016, @03:08AM
It means that if an incident ever actually happens, the response will be to dust off the plans that come out of this process. The military does this kind of thing all the time over really unlikely scenarios, like how the US can defeat Canada in an all-out war if it came to that.
Not proven by any means. I mean, do you really really think that the random civil service bureaucrats are sitting there trying to figure out how to maximize their control over the citizens at large, or do you think that they're trying to put in their 9-5 and go home?
That all makes perfect sense:
- The people in charge need a place that they can plan and direct operations that is well-protected from the effects of the disaster in question.
- Part of keeping them safe includes shooting criminals that might try to take advantage of a disaster situation to loot or rob.
- Areas reserved for staging purposes means that they can quickly move things that they will need during a disaster to a location near to where that disaster is expected to occur. For example, if a hurricane is coming, it's incredibly valuable to have an area in the southeast where you can put all your food and boats and water and helicopters while you wait for the storm to come in, so that as soon as the storm leaves you're there to help those in harms' way within a couple of hours rather than a couple of days.
Wouldn't you want FEMA to do something that works, rather than something that doesn't work?
This is done so that somebody has a complete picture and can provide overall operational guidance. There's good reason to do this: If 10 different agencies all are trying to work in an emergency zone, but nobody's directing traffic overall, you could very easily find yourself with one area that is over-saturated with emergency personnel while another area doesn't get any assistance at all.
There's good reason for that too: If there are undertrained groups of people running around, they will do more harm than good. Sexual harassment classes may seem like a waste of time, until there's a group of firefighters who show up in a disaster zone and are putting the victims of the disaster through even more trauma.
So now we get to your real reason: You just plain don't like the federal government, so you don't like FEMA.
Those are indeed the kinds of scenarios they go through.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @03:34PM
NSA and FEMA. This might sting a bit...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @07:57PM
Alex Jones intensifies
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday November 07 2016, @04:56PM
Get an asteroid of equal size and kinetic energy to hit the other side of the world directly beneath Chicago at exactly the same time.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @05:24PM
Why do we never observe a shooting star coming up from the horizon? If the Earth is a globe, then there should be almost parity with stars shooting down and stars shooting up, right?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 07 2016, @11:18PM
I'll bite.
Yes. And it does work that way. Meteorites and bolides come from virtually any direction..... except that the Earth travels in a particular direction, so it isn't easy for a meteor to "sneak up" from behind.... but even that happens.
Now, why don't you see it "going up?" Well, point at the horizon. No, you're pointing at a patch of sky, aren't you? The sky is "up," ain't it? Even if you do have a perfectly level and flat horizon to 50 miles out, you're pointing at some patch of sky, not earth. Now, meteorite starts flying past. Draw a line with your finger in the sky. While that line may have seemed to start above the horizon - and it may - at night you're not going to notice that the streak (or fireball) going through the sky is going "up" relative to the hemisphere and your orientation. If it's coming from the East, guarantee it is "going up." Just as going to the West is "going down." Unless you're actually in the horizonal footprint of impact and the meteorite actually impacts -- which is *rare.* ("If you find the stone and saw the meteorite fall, it's *not* a meteorite." Because that's true 99.999999999999999999999999999999999997% of the time.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @03:48PM
Yes. And it does work that way.
This is not an answer (unless your answer is that "it is rare", and "because it works this way"). The question is fair and simple, and you carefully avoid answering it: why a shooting star is NEVER observed to intersect the horizon, on its way UP.
Geometry and probability dictates that this should be very common, and in parity. But it is not, which renders the model ripe for debate.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday November 12 2016, @03:47AM
This GIF animation shows meteors appearing from below the horizon.
https://heiscomingblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/animated-shower.gif [wordpress.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @01:39PM
Where? I don't see it, I see streaks that are caused by aircraft lights.
Also, what is up with all this prophecy stuff in this website?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday November 21 2016, @01:56PM
I took another look. I think you're right about those being aircraft.