Don’t panic and look up!

Have you watched Don’t look up and are you wondering what would happen in real life with a NEO targeting Earth?

Our NEROCKER Ettore Perozzi from the Italian Space Agency can help us understand the difference between fiction and reality.

On the one hand, rather than relying on manual calculations performed by a single team of astronomers, in real life, interconnected nets of telescopes scan the sky every night. The Minor Planet Centre in Boston collects their observations and determines the orbits of the bodies observed. It’s then up to specialised NASA and ESA centres to calculate future trajectories and assess impact probability. On top of that, international committees work together to study mitigation techniques considering different impact scenarios.

On the other hand, even if unlikely, the event described in the film could happen for real! That’s why it is important to keep working on deflection techniques (think of DART!)…

For the full article in Italian follow this link.

 

Photo: ASI