NASA scientists are warning us that thousands of “city-killer” asteroids are currently on trajectories to hit Earth.
These mid-sized space rocks, typically ranging from 50 to 300 meters in diameter, pack enough force to obliterate an entire metropolitan area on impact.
Unlike the massive extinction-level objects that wiped out the dinosaurs, city-killers fly largely under the radar and that is precisely what makes them so dangerous.
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NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office estimates that tens of thousands of these near-Earth asteroids remain undetected.
Current telescope technology has successfully catalogued larger threats, but the smaller, darker rocks continue to slip through the net.
Scientists warn that many of these “city-killer” asteroids could crash into Earth’s atmosphere with little to no warning time.
In 2013, the Chelyabinsk meteor served as a stark wake-up call. A relatively modest asteroid, roughly 65.5 feet, roughly equivalent to the length of an Olympic swimming pool or about five to six car lengths wide, exploded over Russia with the force of 30 atomic bombs, injuring over 1,500 people…and nobody saw it coming.
NASA and international partners are pushing forward with next-generation detection programs, including the NEO Surveyor space telescope, designed to locate these hidden threats far in advance.
The agency’s successful DART mission in 2022 also proved that deflecting an asteroid is no longer science fiction.
The message from the scientific community is clear: the threat is real, the timeline uncertain, and preparation cannot wait.
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