Getting Ready to Save the World

I’ve written about this before, but it bears some repeating now.

The ultimate fate of the planet may depend on how the human race can avoid being taken out by an asteroid from space hurtling into Earth -- our Home Sweet Home.

About 65 million years ago, Earth was struck by a huge asteroid in the Gulf of Mexico, a collision that killed off the dinosaurs and changed almost everything.

Mammals began their ascendancy in the scheme of Life, which eventually led to:

Us.

Yes, in a way we are the beneficiaries of that cosmic smack.

But now that we are here running the place, there’s very little good that could come from a similar hit from outer space. And for decades, scientists and astronomers have been charting the course of asteroids, meteors and other space debris that routinely fly past Earth on mostly predictable orbits.

But there is always a chance that a large, previously unknown object could suddenly emerge from deep space and strike the planet.

Does anybody remember the 1998 movie “Armageddon”?

Bruce Willis and his crack team of asteroid driller astronauts were able to fly into space in a rocket and land on the rapidly moving asteroid, blowing it up before it could hit Earth.

Very dramatic and heroic and all, but oh, so unrealistic.

But now there is hope for a way to — if not destroy the asteroid — at least change its trajectory to make it harmlessly fly by Earth and proceed happily on its cosmic journey. It’s called DART, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test.

It was launched 10 months ago and traveled 7 million miles to hit an asteroid that would have missed Earth, but was chosen by NASA scientists to test DART.

And it worked PERFECTLY!

Think about it: How incredibly smart are these NASA nerds to accomplish something like this?

Talk about unrealistic. Probably no one 20 — maybe even 10 years ago — would have predicted that humankind would be able to launch a spacecraft and hit a fast-moving space object, potentially knocking it out of its dangerous-to-Earth path.

But we did.

OK, THEY did, but let’s not quibble. The human race used its technology and brains to possibly eliminate the kind of cosmic collision that could someday have resulted in our species — and maybe all others — sharing the fate of the dinosaurs.

I read that NASA won’t know for months IF or HOW MUCH the DART actually changed the asteroid’s trajectory.

But isn’t it comforting to know that — despite all the chaos, fighting and partisan bickering going on right now -- there are dedicated do-gooders in NASA doing their part to try to save the Earth from a possible future calamity.

My hat is off to them.

Now, let’s see what we can do to prevent nuclear weapons from achieving the same outcome as a rogue asteroid barreling down upon us.