Part 4/11:
Interest in asteroid threats surged after notable cosmic impacts, like the 1994 collision of a comet with Jupiter and the Siberian event. Response initiatives gained momentum in the late 2000s, culminating in the 2016 establishment of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). Since then, the focus has shifted from mere detection to active deflection strategies, with nuclear options long considered but fraught with complications—dispersing an asteroid could lead to multiple hazardous fragments rather than a single extinction-level threat.