ENDEAVOR
Sonny Coloma
At about 7:15 a.m. Manila time last Sept. 27, the world witnessed live on CNN and other channels the crash of a $330-million spacecraft on an asteroid in outer space. This was done to ascertain if the impact can alter the course of asteroids that could someday hit the earth.
The National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) launched this DART probe, shorthand for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, in “the first-of-its-kind maneuver on a small and harmless space rock known as Dimorphos, which is about 6.8 million miles from Earth.” The “partner” asteroid called Didamos, is nearly five times larger, and is orbiting close to Dimorphos.
As reported by The Guardian, “The aim of this kamikaze science mission is straightforward: Space engineers want to learn how to deflect asteroids in case one is ever discovered on a collision course with Earth. Observations of DART’s impact on Dimorphos’s orbit will provide crucial data about how well spacecraft can protect Earth from asteroid armageddon,” they say. According to astronomers, asteroids have hit the earth in the past and it is important to stop or forestall such occurrence.
NASA’s expenditure of $330 million may well be within the federal government’s financial capability and aligned with the agency’s thrust to ensure that the US stays ahead of the curve in terms of dealing with complex scenarios. But this development seems to be tangential to the challenges posed by the current global situation.
As NASA monitored in real time the DART probe’s journey and eventual crash on Dimorphos from its mission operations center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, there was another activity going on about 210 miles away in New York City.
At the opening of the United Nations General Assembly a fortnight ago, UN Secretary-General Guterres called attention to a global cost-of-living crisis, “in which some 94 countries – home to 1.6 billion people – many in Africa – face a perfect storm: economic and social fallout from the pandemic, soaring food and energy prices, crushing debt burdens, spiraling inflation, and a lack of access to finance.” He warned: “These cascading crises are feeding on each other, compounding inequalities, creating devastating hardship, delaying the energy transition, and threatening global financial meltdown.”
Concurrently, global warming continues to trigger strong typhoons and massive flooding, most recently in Pakistan, while severe drought episodes are being experienced in the US and China. The World Meteorological Organization warns that there’s a 50:50 chance that the upper threshold of a 1.5 degree centigrade increase – set at the 2015 Parish Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Agreement on Climate Change – could be reached within the next five years. This is because, while countries have made specific commitments, the overall level of carbon emissions generated by industrial activity remains unchecked.
The G20 countries that are economically more affluent emit about 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions; they also control the levers of decision-making in the United Nations. Hence gridlock or inaction, such as the situation being deplored by the UN Secretary General, worsens the extent of global warming and exacerbates climate injustice: “the poorest and most vulnerable – those who contributed least to this crisis – are bearing its most brutal impacts.”
The third crisis arena is, of course, the Russia-Ukraine conflict that has embroiled Europe with its first major military conflict since World War II, with far-reaching consequences to the rest of the world. Commodity prices continue to soar. Countries like the Philippines that are net importers of energy and food products are threatened by major supply disruptions. The latter includes a fertilizer market crunch that could trigger a larger and even more serious global food supply crisis.
These converging crises prompted UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to deliver a stern warning: “Our world is in peril and paralyzed. We are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction. The United Nations charter and the ideals it represents are in jeopardy and we have a duty to act. We cannot go on like this.”
This was the scenario that faced world leaders, including President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., who traveled to New York in the last fortnight. Although attention was focused on promoting each country’s unique economic and political standing in the family of nations, the transcendental issues affecting the world’s long-term future – including the distinct, even if remote possibility of an asteroid crash – could not be simply relegated to the background.