The Agency's specialists have modeled the parameters of a meteorite, which can wipe out one of the megacities, and have also opened the veil of secrecy over how many such deadly boulders fly in near-earth space.
The US government has tasked NASA with tracking all meteorites that are over 140 meters in size on one side. To do this, American engineers will have to develop and deploy an orbital system for tracking and recording space threats. The US authorities demand that all work be completed by 2020, but NASA employees say that it is unrealistic to meet this deadline.
Before creating such a system, NASA determined what parameters a meteorite should have, capable of destroying a metropolis like New York. The legendary Tunguska meteorite was taken as an example - the power of the explosion during its fall was about 10-15 megatons. According to experts, in order to destroy a large city, the meteorite must be only about 60-70 meters across, which is half the declared lower "threshold" of the future system.
Near-Earth space contains about 300,000 objects over 40 meters in size, and meteorites larger than 20 meters (such as the Chelyabinsk meteorite) - several million. There are at least 20,000 "large-caliber" meteorites, which theoretically are capable of destroying an entire continent, near the Earth. But NASA experts reassure the inhabitants and say that the Apocalypse should not be expected - the larger the object, the easier it is to notice and somehow affect it.