2015年12月22日 星期二

NASA's Pleiades Studies Impact of Asteroid Hitting Earth

NASA's Pleiades Studies Impact of Asteroid Hitting Earth
NASA is using its Pleiades supercomputer to simulate the damage asteroids can cause if they crash into Earth. According to a case study on nasa.gov, the goal is to better assess the threat of collisions and help develop mitigation strategies, such as evacuating populations, altering an asteroid's trajectory so it misses Earth, or destroying the object in space. An asteroid larger than 30 meters, or 98.4 feet, in diameter is expected to hit our planet every 100 years; there are roughly 10,000 of those near Earth, 1,600 of which are classified as dangerous.