There's no international protocol on what to do if an asteroid strikes Earth

Or so hear members of Parliament in the UK

UK lawmakers have learned there is no international protocol for making decisions over how to respond to a prospective life-threatening asteroid strike on Earth.

Members of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee heard how UK academics had been part of the joint NASA and FEMA table top game exercise which found international agencies and governments possess "limited readiness" to "quickly implement" needed space missions to defend the planet against a devastating asteroid strike, even with 14 years' notice. The UK government was not involved, however.

Labour MP Jon Pearce said: "Given how important it would be to make the right call… there's no legal framework or agreement on the decision making protocol for what the response would be?"

Edward Baker, planetary defense lead at the National Space Operations Centre, UK Space Agency, said there was not, but the European Space Agency's Space Mission Planning and Advisory Group (SMPAG or Samepage), does have "a legal working group whose purpose is to work through some of these policy questions."

Those hoping for a swift response when a threatening space boulder approaches the Earth at hypersonic speed might not be assured that we are at the working-through-the-policy-questions stage of readiness.

Equally, the SMPAG is just made up of government space agencies from around the world. "These aren't necessarily the absolute decision makers," Baker said.

Dr Cyrielle Opitom, Chancellor's fellow at the University of Edinburgh, told MPs that NASA, ESA and increasingly China are taking an interest in planetary defense and would likely lead any response, along with the UN.

In 2022, NASA's DART spacecraft smashed the surface of Dimorphos, successfully altering its orbit more than the kinetic impact alone. The impact from the collision shortened the asteroid's orbit by 33 minutes.

However, NASA-led war-gaming of an asteroid strike scenario last year found that space agencies are not ready to implement the operations needed to find out more about the threat and mitigate it, even with more than a decade to prepare.

"The process for making decisions about space missions in an asteroid threat scenario remains unclear. The process has not been adequately defined in the US or internationally," the report said.

It also found aligning governments behind any space mission needed to deflect a looming orb would be difficult, even if technically possible.

"Sustaining the space mission, disaster preparedness, and communications efforts across a 14-year timeline would be challenging due to budget cycles, changes in political leadership, personnel, and ever-changing world events," the report said.

NASA recommended that the international community establish a process for deciding which options to pursue in different planetary defense scenarios and conduct an exercise to test that process. ®