Susanna Reid was quick to correct Ed Balls when he made a claim about Father Christmas that could have upset many children across the country if they caught a glimpse of Good Morning Britain this morning.
The presenting duo were back at the helm of the ITV news programme on Monday (September 26) when they discussed NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart). NASA will launch a probe to crash into an asteroid to see how difficult it would be to stop a sizeable space rock from hitting Earth.
The spacecraft, known as Dart, will crash into the asteroid called Dimorphos. The asteroid is 11 million km [7 million miles] away, and is not currently on a path to hit Earth, nor will it be after Dart crashes into it. The spacecraft is only 19 meters wide, and will crash into the 780 meter asteroid with the hope of knocking it off course slightly. If successful, any asteroids on a path to hit Earth could be hit in the same way and miss the planet.
But as the show's meteorologist Laura Tobin spoke about what is set to happen, Ed appeared to get confused between NASA's live stream of the asteroid impact, which starts at 10:30pm tonight, and The North American Aerospace Defense Command, aka Norad, whose Santa tracker is popular for families at Christmas time.
"It’ll be the same website as they use for Father Christmas coming," the former Labour MP turned TV host said to which Laura quickly replied: "It’s not, it’s Nasa’s YouTube Channel." But Ed was insistent and responded: "No but I think Nasa do a thing where you can track Father Christmas coming."
"That’s Norad," Laura corrected him but Ed went on to say: "I think that’s made up. I don’t know though! Might be real." It was then left to Susanna to clear things up for parents frantically trying to find the remote, saying: "Okay, Father Christmas, by the way, is definitely real. The asteroid is also real."
Ed, however, continued: "But we don’t know where he is. That’s made up." But Susanna scolded him and replied: "Let’s not upset the children by suggesting he’s on the same web stream as an asteroid that’s about to get knocked out of the sky." But Ed still insisted: "It’s the same website," despite being wrong.
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