A NASA scientist has revealed that we are not ready if a surprise asteroid is to hit the Earth.

The Hollywood blockbuster movie Armageddon can be considered a potential reality check about what will happen if a massive asteroid is headed towards the planet. It could cause mass destruction and wipe out life as we know it, said Joseph Nuth of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

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During a meeting in San Francisco with nuclear scientists at the American Geophysical Union conference, Nuth revealed that the "biggest problem" is there is simply nothing we can do about a life- threatening asteroid at the moment. He noted that although these collisions have been rare in our planet's history, they are still not unprecedented.

Nuth said there were extinction level events that wiped out the dinosaurs within a 50 to 60 million year gap which means that humanity may be due to experience another killer asteroid.

In 1996, Earth experienced a close call. Nuth explains that a comet came hurtling into Jupiter. In 2014, a comet nearly grazed Mars which suggests that this comet was close to Earth when it was discovered 22 months before it passed Mars.

With this in mind, Nuth suggests that NASA should develop an "interceptor rocket" that would be mounted on NASA's Planetary Defense Office. Nuth adds that there should be ready to launch a rocket that would be deployed with a year's warning that can lessen the possibility of a surprise asteroid from aweak observational point such as behind the sun.

Earlier this year, NASA created the Planetary Defense Coordination Office to coordinate global efforts to monitor and track down near-Earth objects such as asteroids and comets which can suddenly zip through our neighborhood.

NASA estimates that about 90 percent of the near-Earth objects detected are larger than one kilometer across.