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.
