[Legend2440]

>the constant threat of big enough objects showing up on a collision course with earth

I don't really think this is a serious risk. This is a once-in-a-million-years kind of event.

Also, asteroid detection is not seriously affected by satellites. We can easily tell the difference between a moving satellite and a moving asteroid because of their speed.

[retrochameleon]

Asteroid detection is certainly affected by satellites. The ever increasing number of satellites makes observations that normally detect asteroids very difficult. It is very easy to miss asteroids we would have seen otherwise if not for satellites giving off glare, reflections, and light. We don't just look for asteroids coming directly towards earth, we keep track of all sorts of large objects and their orbits in our solar system. The tracking authority is usually the IAUC Minor Planet Center.

[throw0101a]

> I don't really think this is a serious risk. This is a once-in-a-million-years kind of event.

Perhaps the last event was one million years ago and we are now (proverbially) 'due'.

> The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the belief that an independent and equally probable outcome which happened less frequently than expected is more likely to happen in the future (or vice versa).

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy

It's like people who say "it sure is strange that we had a 'once-in-a-century flood' two years in a row": that's not how odds/probabilities work.

* https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/we-had-a-100-year-flood-two-years-...

[KeplerBoy]

> It's like people who say "it sure is strange that we had a 'once-in-a-century flood' two years in a row": that's not how odds/probabilities work.

That usually refers to climate change and the fact that the odds have changed against our favor.

[ajam1507]

> Perhaps the last event was one million years ago and we are now (proverbially) 'due'.

Ironically this is a great example of the gambler's fallacy.

[throw0101a]

Hence the use of "proverbially" and "due" being in quotation marks.

[edelbitter]

We might have even seen the Chelyabinsk one coming, with current tech.. if only it had been coming at us from a slightly less bright direction. That one was probably in the once-in-a-hundred-years category.

[m4rtink]

That's exactly the thing space asteroid hunting telescopes solve - you can put them insuch a heliocentric orbit that they can watch for those asteroids coming from the direction of the sun.