Protecting Earth from Asteroids

What is being proposed by NASA is a way of destroying these rocks or at least changing their course so they miss the earth assuming we could get enough notice of their existence. There is a report which was released by the White House on June 20, 2018 titled the “National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan.” It concerns what NASA and FEMA will do in the next ten years to prevent asteroid strikes to the earth. It is said the plan calls for enhancing the hunt for hazardous asteroids and then predicting their chances of hitting us. It seems the idea is to deflect these objects. One thing I thought was interesting was the fact astronauts were not going to be used to do any of this. NASA is planning to use robotic spacecraft.

The report calls for five ways to prepare for asteroids heading this way.
1. Better detection
2. Better prediction of the probability of being hit
3. Developing ways to deflect asteroids and develop rapid response
4. Increase international cooperation so we can prepare for an asteroid strike.
5. Develop a plan if a large asteroid was detecting heading this way.
One of the problems is we have found about one-third of the near earth objects are big enough to wipe out a state according to scientists. The other two-thirds are smaller but can still be deadly over a large area. The one which exploded over Russia was only 62 feet long but injured over 1,200 people. NASA is looking to find the rest of the smaller asteroids since it claims the bigger one-third have been cataloged and are being watched. This doesn’t make me feel too confident that all of them have been found just because a government agency says so. Do you feel that way? It is amazing to me how much power is packed into a relatively small package. An asteroid about 500 feet across or a little smaller is said to have the power I eluded to when I said they could wipe out a state.

I have a reason for my doubt about what was said and it is because NASA has also said they identified 95 percent of asteroids which could cause a global catastrophe. That means at least 5 percent are undiscovered and furthermore if you don’t know what the total is how can you make these statements? For example if they find far more than 5 percent then they were wrong about the total. Anyway time is needed to deflect asteroids because the closer they get the more deflection is needed. If you could get to one of these monsters while they were a few years away you might only need a very small degree of deflection but if they get too close you would need a lot more power for a much bigger deflection.

There was a plan I heard of years go where NASA was talking about sending shuttles out to asteroids they thought were coming this way and attaching rocket motors to them to create a deflection, but that seems to have vanished. One of the reasons we haven’t had too many collisions is the fact Jupiter’s gravity has drawn some of these things into it. The giant plant has plenty of gravity which can change the course of an asteroid going by and draw it in. This certainly is not something which always happens however but it could be seen when the Shoemaker-Levy comet hit Jupiter. Many different strategies have been suggested over the years to stop asteroids from crashing into us. One was the use of a nuclear weapon. Basically the two strategies have been exploding or deflecting. Deflect can be a delaying method so the earth with pass in its orbit before the asteroid reaches it. Many asteroids are just rubble piles and it was felt a nuclear explosion would loosen them up sending the pieces out into space in all different directions. Then there is the idea of setting off a nuke near the object to change its trajectory.

Before we do anything to an asteroid with nukes it is very important to note what it is composed of because different compositions of material will yield different results. The shuttle idea was not viable since you would have to catch the asteroid too far away and it would take years to reach some of them which made it an impossible task. There is a lot of talk about a HAIV vehicle which could be used to hit an asteroid. HAIV stands for Hypervelocity Asteroid Intercept Vehicle. The idea is for a vehicle like this to hit an asteroid which would create a crater and then insert a nuclear device into it for a sub-surface nuclear explosion. One way the crater could be used is as a rocket nozzle for following nuclear explosions which would power the asteroid off course.
One of the problems with using nuclear weapons in space is they are forbidden. We signed a test ban treaty in 1996 called the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It bans nuclear weapons in space. This means all the countries who signed the treaty would have to agree to wave it for one instance and this might be an impossible task. There has also been talk about sending large objects into other objects to knock them off course.

Asteroid collisions have become greater problems as we have advanced in technology because we understand better the damage they can cause. In times past I think someone might have thought a big asteroid would merely punch a hole into the soil and land there, they had no idea about the incredible damage one of these things could do to the earth because they had no knowledge about the awesome power of kinetic energy. Some of the new kinetic weapons are said to pack the power of a tactical nuclear weapon and yet they have no explosives packed into them.
Will we be prepared to ward off the next giant asteroid which heads this way? Maybe if it doesn’t hit us before we are ready to do something about it and if we can detect it in time.