{"id":41497,"date":"2025-10-27T02:50:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T21:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=41497"},"modified":"2025-10-30T16:02:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T10:32:16","slug":"threats-posed-by-asteroids-and-need-for-planetary-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/threats-posed-by-asteroids-and-need-for-planetary-defence\/","title":{"rendered":"Threats Posed by Asteroids and Need for Planetary Defence"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Why in News?<\/li>\n<li>What is the Intent of ISRO?<\/li>\n<li>Threats from Space and the Need of a Planetary Defence Programme<\/li>\n<li>Why is Apophis Considered an Alarming Asteroid?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why in News?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Indian Space Research Organisation\u2019s (ISRO) Chairman S Somanath recently showed its intent to develop capabilities in planetary defence &#8211; an area it has so far not entered.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What is the Intent of ISRO?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The Indian space agency might send its own spacecraft to the<strong> asteroid Apophis<\/strong>, when it passes by Earth at a distance of 32,000 km in 2029.<\/li>\n<li>As NASA&#8217;s mission to the asteroid Apophis has already been confirmed, <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/isro\/\" target=\"_blank\">ISRO<\/a> may also collaborate with other space agencies.<\/li>\n<li>A mission to study an asteroid would be the<strong> first step towards building a programme aimed at preventing celestial bodies from colliding with Earth<\/strong> with potentially catastrophic consequences.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Threats from Space and the Need of a Planetary Defence Programme:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Background:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The planets of the Solar System were born in a violent storm of asteroid-like objects that began 4.6 thousand million years ago and lasted for roughly 500 million years.<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s ironic that this process, which at first helped life emerge by supplying the planet with valuable organic compounds, is now posing a threat to it.<\/li>\n<li>The planets failed to consume all of the asteroids and the <strong>planetary leftovers are still orbiting the Sun today<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Most of them are confined to the \u2018main belt\u2019 of asteroids, in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.<\/li>\n<li>They may be pushed out by the planets&#8217; gravitational pull and fall in the direction of the Sun, which means that they may cross Earth\u2019s orbit and potentially collide with it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Threats from asteroids:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Asteroids are headed towards Earth all the time and thousands enter the Earth\u2019s atmosphere every day.<\/li>\n<li>Most are very small and burn up in the atmosphere due to friction. Some of the larger ones burn spectacularly, and show up as fireballs in the sky.<\/li>\n<li>In some cases, unburnt fragments make it to the surface, although they are not large enough to cause much damage.<\/li>\n<li>However, a 20-metre-wide asteroid entered the atmosphere and exploded about 30 km above a Russian town in 2013.<\/li>\n<li>This resulted in the release of energy ~30 times the energy released by the atom bomb that detonated over Hiroshima.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Need of a planetary defence programme:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>An asteroid was detected only after it entered the atmosphere<\/strong> because it came from the direction of the Sun, and was hidden by its glare.<\/li>\n<li>At least 1.3 million asteroids are known to scientists, although there may be more surprising discoveries.<\/li>\n<li>A planetary defence programme seeks to track and neutralise these threats.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why is Apophis Considered an Alarming Asteroid?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When Apophis was discovered in 2004, scientists thought there was<strong> a 2.7% chance of a collision with Earth<\/strong> &#8211; the highest probability of any large asteroid hitting Earth in the recent past.<\/li>\n<li>Initial observations showed that if not in 2029 (when it will come the closest to Earth and flying by at a distance of 32,000 km), Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 or 2068.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Given the asteroid\u2019s size &#8211; <strong>scientists believe that a collision with Earth could cause large-scale damage<\/strong>, drawing comparison with the event that wiped out dinosaurs and most other extant life some 66 million years ago.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Q.1. How is the ISRO expanding its horizon?<\/h2>\n<p>The Indian space agency has diversified its operations and has entered new areas for study. It has since the Chandrayaan-1 mission of 2008 moved into areas like exploration of space and heavenly bodies like the sun, the moon and the planets.<\/p>\n<h2>Q.2. What is the difference between asteroids and meteors?<\/h2>\n<p>An asteroid is a small rocky object that orbits the Sun. A meteor is what happens when a small piece of an asteroid or comet, called a meteoroid, burns up upon entering Earth&#8217;s atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/india\/protecting-earth-from-asteroids-india-wants-to-be-part-of-global-missions-says-isro-chief\/articleshowprint\/111460201.cms?val=3728\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Protecting earth from asteroids: India wants to be part of global missions, says Isro chief<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-sci-tech\/why-isro-wants-to-venture-into-planetary-defence-9447875\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">IE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Indian space agency might send its own spacecraft to the asteroid Apophis, when it passes by Earth at a distance of 32,000 km in 2029<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":41498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-41497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}