Hiding someplace within the gloom of area, there’s a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with our planet. If we don’t spot it and someway thwart its arrival, it would pierce Earth’s environment at 60,000 kilometres per hour and hammer into the bottom, vaporising something it touches.
With thousands and thousands of asteroids hurtling via the interior photo voltaic system, the menace is inevitable: ultimately, an influence will occur. However that doesn’t imply Earth must be a sitting duck. A world group is engrossed in planetary defence, rigorously planning methods to fend off these extraterrestrial interlopers after they present up – or a minimum of minimise the carnage.
Amongst different issues, this work has concerned scanning the sky for threats and testing missions to knock asteroids astray. Nevertheless it additionally features a stunning quantity of role-playing, the place groups war-game asteroid influence situations. “In the real world, we haven’t really gotten to this stage where we actually have to design and build missions, so that’s why we need these exercises,” says NASA’s Paul Chodas, who runs most of the role-plays. “They make you think about details that you would not otherwise think about.”
Over the approaching paragraphs, you may be within the sizzling seat in a choose-your-own journey model of one in every of these role-playing video games. You’ll resolve methods to react because the asteroid bears down upon us. Whether or not you decide to slam a spacecraft into it, use sunlight-absorbing paint to shift its path, or just blow it to smithereens, you can see now we have extra choices…
