The Earth could have been devastated by many city-killer-size asteroids. According to a group of former nasa astronauts, our planet is “literally in a shooting gallery,” and the only thing preventing cataclysmic disaster is “blind luck.”

In an April 17 statement, astronauts Rusty Schweickart and Ed Lu of the B612 Foundation, referenced data recently released from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which monitors infrasound signals across the globe to detect clandestine nuclear bomb detonations. This data showed that since 2001, the monitors picked up 26 multi-kiloton explosions from asteroid impacts. That number is about 10 times more than had been previously known. According to Dr. Lu, this data dispels the “misconception that asteroid impacts are rare. They are not.”

Fortunately, most of these asteroids have exploded at altitudes too high to cause damage on Earth’s surface. Those that have reached Earth have exploded in oceans, barren deserts and largely uninhabited areas. The most recent exception was last year’s 300-to-500-kiloton-plus Chelyabinsk meteor blast that hit Russia with the power of 30 Hiroshima bombs, injuring over 1,000 people.

The astronauts essentially warn that asteroids could be coming to a city near you. That is why the B612 Foundation is working on a $250 million Sentinel telescope to perform thorough, precise scans of space for any Earth-bound asteroids. This would provide years of advance warning, so mankind can deflect potential damage on the Earth’s surface.

“It’s a giant game of chance we’re playing,” cautioned Dr. Lu. “It’s cosmic roulette.” He concluded: “The fact that none of these asteroid impacts represented in the [B612 video presentation] was detected in advance, is proof that the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid is blind luck.”

Our booklet Our Awesome Universe Potential differs with that assessment. Relying on a wealth of insight from reputed astronomers and physicists, columnist Joel Hilliker wrote:

Scientists have come to refer to Earth as a ‘Goldilocks planet.’ That is, in every conceivable way, conditions aren’t too hot or too cold, too large or too small, too close or too far—too anything. No matter what is measured, it is ‘just right.’ … Not only for the existence of life, but also for discovery. And to a mind-boggling level of precision. Even the minutest deviation would make cosmic observation difficult or impossible—or would wipe out all prospect of life.Maybe it’s not luck after all.

There is a reason the universe is not yet in a state of perfection; there is a reason some meteors and asteroids have landed on the Earth’s surface. The omnipotent Creator of the universe “sustains the universe with his word of power” (Hebrews 1:3; Moffatt translation). He has the power to deflect asteroids that would be in opposition to His will. Nothing is ever “blind luck.”

Even with the universe’s current imperfections, giant planets in our solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—shield Earth from dangerous space projectiles like asteroids and comets. Their gravitational pull tends to absorb or deflect the most dangerous of these.

As Dr. Hugh Ross wrote in his book Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, “Clearly, someone wanted human beings to exist and thrive. … His purposes for human existence must be highly valuable.”

Our free, full-color booklet, Our Awesome Universe Potential, explores the design, splendor and precision of our vast universe. It illustrates, in detail, how we are more than just lucky to be on Earth.