Blowing Up Asteroids May Cause Greater Harm, Scientists Say
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LONDON — Attempts to save mankind by smashing asteroids as they head toward Earth may do more harm than good, scientists believe.
Rather than Hollywood’s preferred option, engineers are trying to develop unmanned rockets that can land on space rocks and use the asteroids’ own material to propel them into a safer orbit.
The plan will be detailed at a conference, sponsored by NASA next month, at which its scientists will show their estimate that 100,000 asteroids orbiting near Earth are large enough to destroy a city. So far, the agency has only been able to identify and track 4,000 of them.
Just one soccer field-sized asteroid smashing into the planet would create destruction on a terrifying scale, wiping out any area it hit, sending flaming debris into the atmosphere, and causing tidal waves. Scientists claim that it is only a matter of time before one is found on a collision course.
Research to be unveiled at the three-day Planetary Defense Conference in Washington will show that defending the Earth may not be as simple as suggested by films such as “Armageddon,” in which Bruce Willis’s character destroys a giant asteroid using a nuclear bomb.
Gianmarco Radice of Glasgow University will be one of more than 200 scientists at the conference. He said, “A nuclear blast may cause it to fragment. So instead of having one large object on an impact course, you have five largish objects.
“Also, we do not know a huge amount about the composition of these asteroids. Some are made of rock, others are ice, while others are just piles of rubble. If you smash something into a pile of rubble, it will just break up and then reform by gravity.”
NASA has already tested the approach by smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid in its Deep Impact mission last year. The European Space Agency is planning a similar test, sending a craft to smash into a 500-yard wide asteroid while a spacecraft monitors the results.
Now, an engineering firm in Atlanta has been commissioned by NASA to develop a new kind of mission to land on an asteroid, drill through the surface, and pump the debris into space. Anchoring several unmanned spacecraft, nicknamed Madmen, to an asteroid and ejecting material, would produce enough force in the opposite direction to push an asteroid slowly off its dangerous course.
