article_snippet: Ranging from £340 million to $1 billion ($500 million to $1.5 billion), the cost of the mission would depend on how large the incoming asteroid that needed to be destroyed was.
article_snippet: This diagram shows a simulation of the area affected if something the size of Halley’s Comet, with a diameter of approximately 6.2 miles (10km), hit the US - a possible global extinction event .
article_snippet: a simulation of the area affected shows the area that would be affected, if a medium  asteroid 330ft (100 metres) in diameter hit London.
article_snippet: The EADP team says there is a significant threat of an asteroid hitting Earth .
article_snippet: Last year, the privately-funded B612 Foundation discovered that Earth is up to 10 times more likely to be hit than previously thought.
article_snippet: While the majority of the impacts occur either high up in the atmosphere, or in unpopulated areas including the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the danger was still ever-present.
article_snippet: But what Sensors at the front found were not nuclear explosions, but rather asteroid impacts on a huge scale.
article_snippet: Between 2000 and 2013 the network detected 26 explosions on Earth ranging in energy from one to 600 kilotons - all caused by asteroid impacts.
article_snippet: ‘The mission of preparing humanity for a potential asteroid collision is something that should have done a long time ago,’ the team writes on the team website.
article_snippet: Events like the one in Chelyabinsk, in 2013, could have been avoided if adequate detection and deflection missions had been developed.'
article_snippet: ‘Legal complications or not, we do however believe that if, say, a sizeable asteroid is headed towards a city like New York, Moscow or Beijing, we will as a team be able to gather the global support to get a mandate to act regardless of otherwise existing legal obstructions, if needed in order to save the lives of millions!
article_snippet: Last year experts warned that we must do more to track asteroids, as one could cause widespread damage to the planet.
article_snippet: Most notably, in February 2013, hundreds of people were injured when a meteor exploded near the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia - the largest recorded meteor strike in more than a century .
article_snippet: In this instance it would take 121 days to stop an asteroid that could dangerous to Earth before an asteroid that could dangerous to Earth hit, illustrated right .
article_snippet: In the 1998 movie Armageddon, pictured, Bruce Willis must save Earth from an asteroid by flying to the space rock and blowing an asteroid that could dangerous to Earth up with a bomb .
article_snippet: By 2018, The team want to build a version of HAIV that could destroy an asteroid 165ft (50 metres) across.
article_snippet: And by the end of the decade, The team want to be ready to stop asteroids up to 985ft (300 metres) in size - which account for 99.9 per cent of asteroids near Earth.
article_snippet: Such methods could include hitting an asteroid with laser to deflect it, or rebounding solar rays into it to have the same effect.