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Possible Earth-bound Asteroid Solutions

Posted Apr 26, 2006 at 02:18PM by Kelly T. Listed in: Celestial Bodies
Ó

preparing to attack captain


Currently NASA is undergoing investigation to see what needs to be done if an asteroid was making a bee-line for Earth. Scientists have been playing scenario after scenario of what to do if action needs to be taken. They have thought of lasers, giant space mirrors that would melt ice on the surface, installing jet engines that would change its course, and even painting half an asteroid to radiate heat on each side differently, again changing it's course. There is also talk about sending up a spacecraft to circle the asteroid while sending another spacecraft to intercept it. The only concern is that the asteroid would shatter into pieces and come crashing down on Earth's surface. Another very plausible option has been keyed "the gravity tractor". Physicist Ed Lu suggests sending a space craft near the asteroid and use it's own gravity to pull it off course. It has less chance of problematic errors and can be done in a short amount of time.

So as you can see, there are a lot of plans and ideas but no definite solution. So reassuring, isn't it?

[Via New Scientist] Permalink  |   Email this  |   Linking Blogs   |   Digg It!

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2 Comments


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   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-26
 » This is Sweet
I love the Space blog. I's needs us some edukashun. Although I don't fully understand the "gravity factor" Would that be of the ship or the object? It would have to be quite large to produce enough gravity to change it's course.

I love pspupdates and thanks for all sweet stuff and hard work yall put out! Keep it up!

---The Phool

   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-27
 » Ship's Gravity
The idea would be to alter the asteroid's path by flinging the heaviest ship we can throw at it so that it starts to orbit the asteroid, sucking some inertia from it, hopefully enough so it won't hit us. It's similar to how the Voyager missions took advantage of the planet's allignment to "slingshot" by them - by gaining a speed boost from Jupiter, it slowed Jupiter down slightly (Conservation of Momentum). This would depend on how massive the asteroid was, and how massive and how fast the thing we could throw at it would be. It's kind of scary that this is our best scenario.



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