Asteroid hitting Earth is no longer just a Hollywood scenario — and NASA’s own planetary defense chief has made that pretty clear. The AAAS conference in Phoenix put out a stark NASA asteroid warning today: researchers have detected only about 40% of mid-sized near-Earth asteroids so far, tens of thousands remain untracked out there, and Earth has no active deflection system ready to use right now.
An asteroid hitting Earth at that scale would wipe out an entire city and cause regional devastation that no current insurance model can fully absorb. For investors already navigating a volatile market, the asteroid hitting Earth conversation is also starting to bleed into financial territory — specifically, whether the market is about to reprice insurance stocks to buy.
Also Read: Costco Returns Get Stricter: Smart Move for COST Stock?
NASA Asteroid Alerts And Threats Could Drive Insurance Stocks Rally
The Threat Nobody Saw Coming
Dr. Kelly Fast, NASA’s acting planetary defense officer, didn’t hold back when asked what keeps her up at night. The asteroid hitting Earth risk she’s most concerned about isn’t the big, movie-style extinction event — it’s the mid-sized rocks nobody has found yet. Fast stated:
“It’s really the asteroids that we don’t know about. It’s the ones in-between that could do regional damage. Maybe not global consequences, but they could really cause damage. And we don’t know where they all are. It’s not something that even with the best telescope in the world you could find.”
NASA asteroid monitoring teams tracked asteroid 2024 YR4 closely throughout early 2025 and briefly put its chances of hitting Earth in 2032 at 3.2%, though further observations brought that figure down to near-zero. Scientists say the asteroid NASA flagged through its Planetary Defense Coordination Office serves as a reminder that these threats don’t always come with much warning. Dr. Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins, who led the 2022 DART mission, was also direct about what would happen if another credible asteroid hitting Earth threat emerged tomorrow.
No Spacecraft Ready to Launch — Right Now
Chabot said:
“Dart was a great demonstration. But we don’t have [another] sitting around ready to go if there was a threat that we needed to use it for.”
Chabot also added:
“If something like YR4 had been headed towards the Earth, we would not have any way to go and deflect it actively right now. We could be prepared for this threat. And I don’t see that investment being made.”
What It Could Mean for Insurance Stocks
From a market standpoint, a sustained NASA asteroid warning today — not a confirmed impact, but a credible ongoing threat — is exactly the kind of scenario that historically drives an insurance stocks rally. When catastrophe risk reprices upward, insurers see revenue climb sharply. An insurance stocks rally of this kind followed major natural disaster cycles in the past, too. Among insurance stocks to buy that analysts are watching for 2026: Travelers (TRV), Chubb (CB), and Kinsale Capital (KNSL), all of which posted solid underwriting results heading into this year. The sector is no longer dismissing the prospect of asteroid hitting Earth events being formally factored into catastrophe models, either.
Fast also noted the broader case for planetary defense investment:
“It’s the only natural disaster we could potentially prevent.”
Also Read: Amazon, Nvidia, Meta Slump: Why Are Investors Selling Big Tech Stocks?
The NASA asteroid warning today is a reminder that asteroid hitting Earth risks, while still considered low-probability, are being taken more seriously — and the insurance industry is increasingly being asked to put a number on them.