{"id":474279,"date":"2026-02-17T18:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474279\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T18:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:15:08","slug":"it-keeps-me-up-at-night-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/474279\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It keeps me up at night’"},"content":{"rendered":"

She\u2019s worried about the a-rock-alypse.<\/p>\n

A planetary defense expert is warning that humanity is defenseless against up to 15,000 undetected near-Earth asteroids that have the potential to take out a city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat keeps me up at night is the asteroids we don\u2019t know about,\u201d warned Kelly Fast, a planetary defense officer at NASA, while addressing the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Phoenix, Arizona, the Daily Star reported.<\/a><\/p>\n

Fast clarified that she\u2019s not worried about the \u201clarge ones\u201d as they know \u201cwhere they are,\u201d or the small stuff that\u2019s \u201chitting us all the time.\u201d Rather, it\u2019s the space rocks that measure around 500 feet that concern her because they\u2019re small enough to avoid detection but large enough to make an impact.<\/p>\n

Fast (pictured) said it was her responsibility to \u201cfind asteroids before they find us\u201d and potentially develop methods of \u201cgetting asteroids before they get us.\u201d NASA \/ Joel Kowsky<\/p>\n

The space defense expert said that these this mid-size asteroids, fittingly known as \u201ccity killers,\u201d have the potential to cause \u201cregional damage,\u201d The Times Of London reported.<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Fast, there are around 25,000 of these interstellar in-betweeners passing within our planet\u2019s vicinity, and we only know the location of around 40%.<\/p>\n

She said that their inconvenient size makes them hard to detect \u201ceven with the best telescopes\u201d as they accompany Earth in orbit around the Sun, preventing them from reflecting sunlight. <\/p>\n

To circumvent this problem, scientists are planning to deploy a \u201cNear-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope,\u201d launching next year. <\/p>\n

It uses thermal signatures to\u00a0spot dark asteroids and comets that were previously hidden from our planet.<\/p>\n

There are 15,000 of these near-Earth city killers that are unaccounted for, according to Fast. Matthieu \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Fast said it was her responsibility to \u201cfind asteroids before they find us\u201d and potentially develop methods of \u201cgetting asteroids before they get us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, even if scientists did manage to detect these incognito space stones, there might be little we could do to stop them.<\/p>\n

In a groundbreaking 2022 experiment, NASA purposefully crashed a spacecraft called Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) into\u00a0the mini moon Dimorphos at 14,000mph, proving that asteroids could be knocked off course.<\/p>\n

These mid-size asteroids are small enough to avoid detection, but large enough to cause serious damage. Siraphatphoto \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

However, Dart mission leader Nancy Chabot suggested this defense mechanism would be difficult to replicate with a \u201ccity killer\u201d as they don\u2019t have one of these deflector crafts \u201csitting around ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would not have any way to go and actively deflect one right now,\u201d rued Chabot, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. <\/p>\n

However, she doesn\u2019t foresee space agencies investing in such a measure as they \u201clack the funding to keep planetary defenses on standby.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could be prepared for this threat,\u201d she warned. \u201cWe could be in very good shape. We need to take those steps to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

We might need to formulate a plan sooner than we think. <\/p>\n

Scientists warn that notorious city-killer asteroid YR4<\/a> \u2014 which has been on our radar since 2024 \u2014 has a 4% chance of striking the moon in 2032.<\/p>\n

To prevent a lunar crash landing, space defense experts have proposed blowing it up with nukes like something out of the sci-fi thriller \u201cArmageddon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She\u2019s worried about the a-rock-alypse. A planetary defense expert is warning that humanity is defenseless against up to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[23246,6949,718,79,193],"class_list":["post-474279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apocalypse","tag-asteroids","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}