The NASA and the international partners launched the 2025 Planetary Defense Conference by live asteroid exercises where an impending asteroid was simulated as a city-killer rock falling on Earth. The exercise, dubbed Asteroid Impact 2025, is an experiment on this exact scenario, and involves the world responding to a 300-meter asteroid that is crashing into Mumbai in 6 months. Deflection plans, evacuation plans, and media plans are coordinated by more than 200 scientists, space agencies (ISRO, ESA, JAXA), and militaries, which underscores the first actual human attempt to prevent Armageddon.
Drill Situ and Problems.
The kind of fictional asteroid in 2025 XM1 is a reflection of real dangers such as Apophis (2029 close approach). At 180 days notice with ATLAS telescopes is enough to launch kinetic impactors (NASA follow-up DART), or to apply gravity to them, but not long enough to evacuate all 20 million. Drills are divided into stages: tracking (goldstone radar), modeling deflection (ion thrusters vs nukes), and ground response (shelters, supply chains). Problematic issue: foreign affairs- China demands UN veto, US demands unilateral measures.
Hard tech pays off: The 2022 success of the Dimorphos mission by DART demonstrated that kinetic deflation can work, moving orbits within half an hour. Future Hera mission (2026) narrows nuclear.
Systems Tested on a Global System.
Exercises of FEMA-style are active in India (NDMA), in US (Planetary Defense Coordination Office), and in Europe. Simulation evacuation of 5 million people of Mumbai to Maharashtra hinterlands during monsoons tests rail/airlifts. Communication exercises defy panic -WhatsApp alerts, Doordarshan broadcasts. ISRO delivers GSLV searchlights; Starlink by SpaceX provides comms.
| Drill Element | Tech/Strategy Tested | Success Metric |
| Detection | ATLAS + NEOWISE | 99% accuracy |
| Deflection | DART kinetic/nuclear | 70% orbit change |
| Evacuation | NDMA mega-cities | 50% in 90 days |
| Warning Systems | Global SMS/APP alerts | 80% reach |
Lessons and Real Threats
The gaps were revealed in past exercises (2019 Venus flyby) such as public mistrust, delays in sharing data. The unveils of this year are indicative of a weak India: there is no specific deflection technology, there are threats of urban density. According to experts, there are 1,000 and more near-Earth objects that are larger than 140m and have not been tracked.
After drill, UN drives 10B Planetary Defense Fund. The NEO Surveyor by NASA is a promise of complete catalog (2028). The more we start to understand the threat of climate, the more we learn that we can do something about it, that the sci-fi turns into survival strategy through the use of asteroid defense.
