This Week, NASA Is Pretending An Asteroid Is On Its Way To Smack The Earth

A stripe of red dots shows the risk corridor for a hypothetical asteroid strike, part of an exercise this week held by planetary defense experts in which they analyze data about a fictitious asteroid.

A fictitious asteroid is the focus of a realistic exercise, as experts at the Planetary Defense Conference run through how they would respond to news of a looming asteroid strike.

(Image credit: Landsat/Copernicus/Google Earth/Dept. of State Geographer)