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A major group fighting to save the world from catastrophic events has made a stark warning about the rogue space rocks.

The B612 Foundation is made up of former astronauts and scientists who focus on defending Earth from the apocalypse.

In 2005, Nasa said 90% of discovered asteroids which are at least 140m in diameter pose no immediate threat.

But millions of asteroids in the 15m to 140m range are “near Earth”.

(Image: GETTY)

And it is estimated only around 18,000 are tracked globally and the majority are not even monitored, reports News.com.au.

Lasers and nuclear weapons could hypothetically be used to destroy an incoming asteroid, however the experts believe we wouldn’t even know about the asteroids until they hit.

B612 foundation president Danica Remy said that operational telescopes can only pick up a small number of asteroids.

“The telescopes’ field of view is very small and the sky is very big,” Ms Remy said.

“We can currently determine in advance if one of the 18,000 asteroids we have observed is going to hit us, but we’d only know if one of the several million we haven’t observed is on a trajectory for Earth if a land-based telescope observed it.

“It might be picked but it’s more likely it wouldn’t and that we’d first find out about it on impact.”

An asteroid bigger than the Eiffel Tower flew past Earth earlier this month.

Ms Remy told News.com.au they must track all near-Earth asteroids and increase the rate of “discovery” before it is too late.

She added: “It’s 100 per cent certain we’ll be hit, but we’re not 100 per cent certain when.

“Right now we’re going slow in our discoveries: the world detects about 1000 asteroids per year and we want to accelerate that rate of discovery to 100,000 per year but don’t have the space instruments or telescopes to do that,” she said.

“We need to find them before they find us.”

The B612 Foundation believes the best defence against a potentially dangerous asteroid would be a “gravity tractor”, a spacecraft which flies alongside the rock and exerts a gravitational pull which tugs the asteroid onto a different less dangerous orbit.

But the experts have stressed this technology is untested.

Earlier this month, NASA shockingly admitted there are thousands of deadly asteroids that have not yet been detected.

Congress tasked the agency with spotting 90% of all NEOs bigger than 460ft by 2020, but NASA admitted only a third of such objects are being tracked.

The B612 Foundation has urged for more global funding.

Ms Remy added: "The thing that’s really most important is we need a comprehensive map showing the location, features and routes to all of these asteroids so we can defend ourselves.

“Asteroids don’t care where they hit. It could be Australia, Japan, or Columbus Ohio.

“It’s really a global issue.”