Fearsome killer asteroids threaten Earth; NASA can do THIS to save humanity

tech.hindustantimes.com:

The term near-Earth object or NEO refers to any celestial body of a significant size. The starting point is to find out those objects whose orbit brings them close to Earth. These include asteroids, meteorites and comets. According to NASA, there are more than 27,000 such NEOs floating around our planet and hundreds fly by our planet every year. And they don’t just fly past us. Just a month ago, we witnessed asteroid EB5 getting pulled by the Earth’s gravitational force and hitting Earth in the western coast of Greenland. With the threat of asteroids looming over our head, humanity is not waiting for the eventuality to happen. NASA has been working on an interplanetary defense system for a while now and with every passing year, it is getting better at this job. But, if an asteroid were to strike the Earth tomorrow, could we defend ourselves? Read on to find out.

Scientists have revealed that the Earth did not always have so many space neighbors. In fact, a long time ago, there were barely any asteroids near our planet. However, around 290 million years ago, the probability of an asteroid striking the Earth increased dramatically, according to an article by National Geographic. And ever since, we have been in this high probability zone. The last large asteroid impact was in 2013 in Chelyabinsk, Russia when a 20-meter wide asteroid exploded and injured more than 1,500 people. We have had asteroid impacts even after that incident, but none so devastating.

Similarly, the last large-scale asteroid destruction on Earth can be traced to 66 million years ago, when a 10 kilometers wide asteroid wiped out dinosaurs from our planet and caused an ice age. So, if another planet-killer asteroid like that was headed towards Earth, would