Mother Jones
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If scientists were to discover, later this week, that an asteroid large enough to destroy the Earth will smash into the planet in a years’ time, humanity would have only one course of action, says former astronaut Russell Schweickart: “Make yourself a nice cocktail and go out and watch.”
That’s why the United Nations is forming an “International Asteroid Warning Group,” on the advice of an association of former astronauts, to share data about threatening asteroids. In a set of forthcoming recommendations, the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) will loosely outline the emergency steps that the UN’s longstanding Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space must take if the asteroid warning group identifies an extinction-level space rock on a collision course with Earth. (The best option, according to ASE, would be to crash a spacecraft into the asteroid to knock it off course.)
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