Earth is enduring more dangerous asteroid impacts than previously believed, according to data from monitoring stations designed to enforce a nuclear test ban treaty.
The study was carried out by the B612 Foundation, a group of three former astronauts.
From 2003 through 2013, the Earth was hit by approximately 26 asteroids that exploded with a force of between one and 600 kilotons, or an average of one every six months, according to the B612 Foundation.
In every case, the asteroids were not detected in space, and only came to light after detonated in Earth's atmosphere.
The foundation's CEO Dr. Ed Lu, a former shuttle pilot, presented the report's findings at a press conference in Seattle's Museum of Flight on April 22.
"While most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected, less than 10,000 of the more than a million dangerous asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire major metropolitan area have been found by all existing space or terrestrially operated observatories," said Lu at the press conference, according to CBS News.
"Because we don't know where or when the next major impact will occur, the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a 'city-killer' sized asteroid has been blind luck," he added.
Four of this century's collisions have been larger than the atomic bombs that took out Nagasaki and Hiroshima, according to the study.
Over 1,500 people were hurt when an asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, and over 20 kiloton impacts were recorded over places like the Mediterranean, Indonesia, and the Southern Ocean.
NASA's Spaceguard project, which is named after the fictional asteroid-watching body defined by Arthur C. Clarke, has done a decent job finding larger clumps of space junk that could threaten human life on Earth, but it is missing a lot of smaller debris.
"Remember, we had that meteor that sailed over Russia? What was astonishing was that it was only 60 feet across. It had the force of 20 Hiroshima bombs. In other words, we had underestimated a whole class of small meteors less than 100 feet across," said "CBS This Morning' contributor Michio Kaku, a physics professor at the City University of New York.
Smaller debris cold cause a tsunami or wipe out an entire city.
The B612 Foundation is trying to build and launch a privately funded orbital asteroid detector, which they have called the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission.
Designs have already been completed and the team believes they could find 200,000 additional smaller asteroids a year once it is launched, according to Lu.
The telescope will likely launch sometime in 2018.
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
