National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hosted a fictitious asteroid emergency exercise in order to prepare themselves for combating the occurrence of any such real threat.
"It's not a matter of if, but when we will deal with such a situation," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
"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," he added.
These exercises would provide the planetary science community with a medium to show how it would collect, examine and share data about an imaginary asteroid predicted to impact Earth.
A discussion regarding judicious usage of the collected information was carried out by the emergency managers to scrutinise the unknown challenges that the asteroid impact might pose and also to warn and prepare the public about this danger.
"It is critical to exercise these kinds of low-probability but high-consequence disaster scenarios," FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said.
"By working through our emergency response plans now, we will be better prepared if and when we need to respond to such an event," he added.
In the latest exercise carried out by the NASA researchers, an imaginary celestial body, which is 300-800 feet wide, was assumed to be falling towards Earth too rapidly. This imaginary object needs to be redirected and the Los Angeles area, which is at 100 percent risk of being hit by this object, needs a hypothetical mass evacuation.
Experts from NASA, FEMA, the Department of Energy's National Laboratories, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Governor's Office of Emergency Services and the US Air Force were a part of this exercise, which is likely to equip NASA in saving Earth from any asteroid collision.
