'We must prepare ourselves': ISRO Chief S. Somanath says possibility of an asteroid hitting Earth is real

A gigantic asteroid called Apophis is likely to pass by Earth in 2029 and then again in 2039. ISRO chief, S Somanath told News18, that such events need to be taken seriously. He revealed that recently he spotted an asteroid named Shoemaker-Levy hitting Jupiter. He said that if such incident were to happen to Earth, we all will be extinct.

He told the publication that we tend not to believe in such events because we haven’t seen such catastrophe in our 70–80 years of lifespan. However, if we look at the history of the world and the universe, these events are quite frequent.

Notably, the impact of an asteroid 10 km or bigger is recognised as an extinction-scale event, causing most of the species to wipe off due to its aftermath.

He further added, “These are real possibilities. We must prepare ourselves. We don’t want it to happen to Mother Earth. We want humanity and all life forms to live here. But we can’t stop it. We have to find alternatives to it. So, we have a method by which we can deflect it. We can detect near-Earth approach and take it away and sometimes it might be impossible also. So, technology needs to be developed, prediction capabilities, ability to send heavier props up there to deflect it, observation improvement and joint working with other nations for a protocol.”

He noted that if such threat becomes real, everyone from across the universe should prepare together and work on it. He said, “It will take shape in the days to come. When the threat becomes real, humanity will get together and work on it. As a leading space nation, we need to take responsibility. It’s not just for India alone, it’s for the whole world that we need to take the onus on us to prepare and develop technical capability, programming capability to do that and ability to work with other agencies.

As per an official statement by Anil Kumar, Associate Director, ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), “Experiments are on to find out if an asteroid is expected to hit within a year and if we are ready to defend.”