Asteroids that might threaten Earth could pose a
challenge beyond the obvious, if nations can't get their act together and
figure out a unified plan of action.
There are currently no known space rocks on a collision
course with Earth, but with ample evidence for past impacts, researchers say
it's only a matter of time before one is found to be heading our way.
A swarm of political and legal issues bedevil any national
or international response, whether it's responsibility for collateral
damage from deflected asteroids or the possible outcry if one country decides
to unilaterally nuke the space threat.
"The word 'unorganized' is spot on here," said
Frans von der Dunk, space law expert at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
"There is no such thing as even a platform for some level of coordination
regarding possible responses — and, to be honest, some quarters very much would
like it to remain that way."
Legal experts discussed such problems last week at a
University of Nebraska-Lincoln conference titled "Near-Earth Objects:
Risks, Responses and Opportunities-Legal Aspects." Their talks
underscored how underprepared the international community is to deal with
policy and legal fallout from a potential asteroid threat.
Saving Earth vs. scaring everybody
Many scientists have already brainstormed a variety of
ways to deflect or destroy rogue asteroids, such as sending out spacecraft to
nudge the space rock aside for a near-miss or simply blasting it apart. But
some solutions may have different levels of appeal for various nations,
especially when they involve launching potential weapons into space.
For instance, international concern surrounded a U.S. shoot-down
of a failing satellite last year, not to mention China's 2007 knockout of
its own aging weather satellite with a ballistic missile. Both cases raised
worries about the demonstration of potential missile defense systems or
satellite-killer technologies.
"The international political reactions to the U.S.
shooting down of its own satellites a year ago to prevent presumably dangerous
and toxic fuel from reaching Earth only foreshadows what would happen if the
U.S. would detonate nukes claiming to destroy an incoming asteroid," von
der Dunk told SPACE.com.
Other scenarios could highlight the question of
international unity. A United Nations Security Council decision on a certain
asteroid response would likely shield participating nations against any liabilities
for collateral damage from a failed deflection or interception attempt, if the
past serves as any guide — the U.S. and other coalition nations that kicked
Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991 were not held responsible for damages to Iraq under
Security Council mandate.
Depends on who'll get hit
Von der Dunk also posed the tricky question of what the
international response would be if a smaller asteroid was headed for North
Korea. The politically isolated nation attempted but failed to put a communications
satellite into orbit in April, and would almost certainly require
assistance from the U.S., Russia or China to deal with an asteroid threat.
Better international cooperation might also help in
figuring out how to assess asteroid threats and release potentially scary info
to the public.
"We have already seen scares raised by scientists
ready to put out alarms out there, when either their data (fortunately
quickly!) turned out to be considerably flawed, or later data allowed for a
much more precise estimate of the risk — which turned out to be much
lower," von der Dunk said.
He pointed to the case of the Apophis
asteroid, in which astronomers initially gave a one-in-37 chance of it
striking Earth in 2029, but later refined chances of collision to almost zero.
Experts at the conference agreed to keep pushing forward
on legal issues, as well as focus on general education on the asteroid threat
for policymakers. And they even discussed how private companies might join in
the effort to monitor asteroids, potentially for the purpose of extracting
mineral wealth from space rocks.
Von der Dunk heads next to the Planetary Defense
Conference in Spain April 27-30, where he will present the conference
recommendations to the International Academy of Astronautics and the European
Space Agency.
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