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How Would We Save the Planet from a Killer Asteroid?

Learn how we can prevent killer asteroids from threatening Earth using NASA's innovative methods and technologies.

Meteors are both common and beautiful. But bright fireballs are much more rare.Credit: NPS

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We don’t need to be scared of everything that falls from space. In fact, literal tons of space rocks rain down daily, though that’s mostly in the form of minuscule dust grains. But every 100 million years or so, catastrophe strikes in the form of a rock spanning miles.

The last one killed not just the dinosaurs, but three-quarters of all life on Earth. The effects on humans could be equally devastating — bomb shelters wouldn’t cut it in the face of such an event.

Not when the shaken Earth hurls tsunamis onto every shore. Not when volcanoes explode in angry retort. Not when the skies go dark with the asteroid version of a nuclear winter, dust and debris covering the sun. Even people who survive the first wave of destruction would inherit a world utterly destroyed. The world’s stubbornest creatures, the cockroaches and rats and tardigrades, would probably be ...

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