WASHINGTON — If an Earth-bound asteroid was seen with only six months' warning, a group of scientists from NASA and other space agencies has concluded that no-one could do anything to stop it hitting the planet, according to Business Insider.
Their simulation, which played out online from April 26 to April 28 according to Space.com, found that there isn't a spacecraft capable of getting off the ground and flying up to disrupt the asteroid's trajectory in that amount of time.
Having used a scenario where an asteroid was spotted 35 million miles from Earth, Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, told Business Insider that we would need a minimum of five years to stop any threat.
However, MIT astronomer Richard Binzel concluded we would need at least 10 years, in order to study aspects of the asteroid such as its size, its path around the sun, and what it's made up of.