Asteroid deflection strategies

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Asteroid deflection strategies are methods by which near-Earth objects could be diverted, preventing potentially catastrophic impact events. A sufficiently large impact would cause massive tidal waves or, by placing large quantities of dust into the stratosphere blocking sunlight, cause a nuclear winter. A collision between the earth and a ~10 km object 65 million years ago is believed to have produced the Chicxulub Crater and the extinction of the majority of species preserved in the fossil record.

The dangers posed by such collisions go beyond the physical destruction caused by the impacts themselves. A nation hit by less than extinction-destructive force may, depending on their military political situation, think they are being attacked by another nation and retaliate. If this had happened to a superpower during the Cold War, it may have thought it was under nuclear attack and "returned" fire.

The probability that any one of Near-Earth object will hit Earth is extremely low, but the damage from any one strike can be catastrophic; consequently the odds of being killed by an asteroid are comparable to the odds of being killed by an airplane crash.

While in theory the chances of such an event are no greater now than at any other time in history, recent astronomical events (such as Shoemaker-Levy 9) have drawn attention to such a threat, and advances in technology have opened up new options.

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Early detection

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Almost any deflection effort requires years of warning, allowing time to build a slow-pusher or explosive device to deflect the object. 10 years or more of advance warning would be needed for an asteroid larger than 200 meters across.

A number of potential threats have been identified, such as 99942 Apophis (previously known by its provisional designation 2004 MN4), which had an impact probability of ~3% for the year 2029. This probability has been revised to zero on the basis of new observations.

An impact by a 10 km asteroid on the Earth is widely viewed as an extinction-level event, likely to cause catastrophic damage to the biosphere. Depending on speed, objects as small as 100 m in diameter are historically extremely destructive. There is also the threat from comets coming into the inner Solar System. The impact speed of a long-period comet would likely be several times greater than that of a near-Earth asteroid, making its impact much more destructive.

Finding out the material composition of the object is also necessary before deciding which strategy is appropriate. Missions like the 2005 Deep Impact probe have provided valuable information on what to expect. Template:Seealso

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Popular strategies

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Nuclear weapons

One of the most often proposed solutions is firing nuclear missiles at the oncoming asteroid to vaporize all or most of it. While today's nuclear weapons are not powerful enough to destroy a 1 km asteroid, theoretically, thermonuclear weapons can be scaled up to any size so long as enough raw materials are available. If not completely vaporized, the resulting reduction of mass from the blast combined with the radiation blast could produce positive results. The largest problem with this solution is that if the asteroid breaks into fragments, any fragment larger than 35 m across would not burn up in the atmosphere and itself could impact Earth. Tracking of the thousands of fragments that could result would prove daunting.

Another proposed solution is to detonate a series of smaller nuclear devices alongside the asteroid, far enough away as to not fracture the object. Providing this was done far enough in advance, the relatively small forces from any number of nuclear blasts could be enough to alter the object's trajectory enough to avoid an impact. This is a form of nuclear pulse propulsion. In 1968, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed a system using nuclear explosions to prevent a hypothetical impact on Earth by the asteroid 1566 Icarus. This design study was later published as the Icarus Project.

Dan Durda (homepage) has argued that if an asteroid was a rubble pile, had a low enough density and was porous enough, it could absorb enough energy from a stand-off explosion to not be deflected. The energy of a nuclear explosion on Earth is initially released in gamma rays and neutrons with X-rays and debris within the surroundings determining how much energy is produced as blast. In the vacuum of space the gamma rays and neutrons might be free to impact unimpeded; however, the dynamics of a nuclear blast in space are unknown. This plan would require testing nuclear devices in space, which is illegal according to the Outer Space Treaty.

Some cynics suggest that nuclear scientists are simply trying to find new excuses to keep nuclear missiles around and to keep improving them, as their careers have been endangered since the end of the Cold War. In particular, accusations focused on the efforts of Edward Teller.

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Detonating internally

A strategy in films is to plant powerful explosives inside the asteroid, detonate them and break the asteroid into pieces. This technique, as with launching nuclear weapons from Earth, would cause subsequent impact events of large fragments of the asteroid. A large asteroid could be blown apart by a nuclear device detonated in its core only to have gravity draw the asteroid back together, essentially nullifying the effect of the explosion.

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Kinetic impact

An alternative means of deflecting an asteroid is to attempt to directly alter its momentum by sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid.

In the case of 99942 Apophis it has been demonstrated by ESA that deflection could be achieved by sending a relatively simple spacecraft weighing less than one ton to impact against the asteroid. During a trade-off study (carried out by the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency) Dario Izzo (homepage) argued that a strategy called 'kinetic impactor deflection' was more efficient than others.

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Asteroid gravitational tractor

The major alternative to explosive deflection is to use some sort of system to move the asteroid slowly over a period of time. Tiny constant thrust accumulates to deviate an object sufficiently from its predicted course. Edward T. Lu and Stanley Love have proposed using a large heavy unmanned spacecraft hovering over an asteroid to gravitationally pull the latter into a non-threatening orbit. The spacecraft and the asteroid mutually attract one another. If the spacecraft counters the force towards the asteroid by, e.g., a nuclear electric rocket, the net effect is that the asteroid is accelerated towards the spacecraft and thus slightly deflected from its orbit. While slow, this method has the advantage of working irrespective of the asteroid composition or spin rate — rubble pile asteroids would be difficult or impossible to deflect by means of nuclear detonations while a pushing device would be hard or inefficient to mount on a fast rotating asteroid. A gravity tractor would likely have to spend several years beside the asteroid to be effective.

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Use of focused solar energy

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H. Jay Melosh proposed to deflect an asteroid or comet by focusing solar energy onto its surface to create thrust from the resulting vaporization of material, or to amplify the Yarkovsky effect. Over a span of months or years enough solar radiation can be directed onto the object to deflect it.

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Other proposals

  • Setting up an automated mass driver machine on the asteroid to eject material into space thus giving the object a slow steady push and decreasing its mass.
  • Any spacecraft propulsion device would have a similar effect of giving a steady push.
  • Wrapping the asteroid in a sheet of reflective plastic such as aluminized PET film, or dusting the object with powdered chalk or soot to alter its trajectory via the Yarkovsky effect.
  • Attaching a large enough solar sail directly to the object, thus using solar pressure to shift the object's orbit.
  • Chapman, Durda & Gold's white paper calculates deflections using existing chemical rockets, delivered to the asteroid, then push it sideways, assuming sufficient fuel also delivered.
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Deflection technology concerns

Carl Sagan in his book Pale Blue Dot, expressed concerns about deflection technology: that any method capable of deflecting impactors away from Earth could also be abused to divert non-threatening bodies toward the planet. Considering the history of genocidal political leaders and the possibility of the bureaucratic obscuring of any such project's true goals to most of its scientific participants, he judged the Earth at greater risk from a man-made impact than a natural one. Sagan instead suggested that deflection technology should only be developed in an actual emergency situation.

Analysis of the uncertainty involved in nuclear deflection shows that the ability to protect the planet does not imply the ability to target the planet. A nuclear bomb which gave an asteroid a delta v of 10 meters/second (plus or minus 20%) would be adequate to push it out of an earth-impacting orbit. However, if the uncertainty of the velocity change was more than a few percent, there would be no chance of directing the asteroid to a particular target.

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Planetary defense timeline

  • In the 1980's NASA studied evidence of past strikes on planet Earth, and risk of this happening at our current level of civilization. This led to a program to map which objects in our solar system both cross Earth orbit and are large enough to do us serious damage if they ever hit us. The working conclusion is that there are approximately 1500 such objects, and that the odds are that within a 1,000 year period, some of them are going to hit us, unless we do something about it. It is now anticipated that by year 2008, we will have identified and be tracking all such objects that are 1 km or more in diameter.
  • In the 1990's, US Congress held hearings to consider the risks and what needed to be done about them. This led to a $ 3 million annual budget for programs like spaceguard and the near-earth object program, as managed by NASA and USAF.
  • In 2005 the world's astronauts published an open letter through the Association of Space Explorers calling for a united push to develop strategies to protect planet Earth from the risk of a cosmic collision.
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Formation of the Moon

The Earth collided with a Mars-sized object in its early development. The resulting debris in Earth orbit coalesced to form the Moon. This model is supported by theories of planetary formation and the chemistry of the Earth and Moon.

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65 million years ago

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The asteroid was ~10 km (6 mi) wide, striking the Yucatan peninsula of what ultimately became Mexico, creating the Chicxulub Crater. In addition to the dinosaurs, this also would have wiped out a great proportion of other animal and plant life on Earth.

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50,000 years ago, Arizona

crater, 1 km across, energy equivalent to 500 Hiroshima bombs. Winslow, Arizona, iron body 50 m across.

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1908 Tunguska event, Siberia

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A ~50 m chunk of cometary material exploded over the Stony Tunguska River of Siberia, Russia, with damage the equivalent of 600 Hiroshima-size nuclear bombs, without creating any crater, leveling trees for miles around in the Siberian forest, with a blast felt hundreds of miles away.

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1972, Earth atmosphere

An asteroid 100 m across actually dipped into Earth's atmosphere, creating a spectacular fireball, but 'skipped' back into space.

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1989

An asteroid 800 m in diameter crossed Earth orbit just 6 hours before Earth would be in that same place.

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2002, 1/3 distance to Moon

NASA reported that a soccer field-sized asteroid missed earth by about 75,000 miles in June 2002. It was discovered slightly after closest approach.

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2029 near miss

99942 Apophis will pass within 4 Earth radii of the Earth's center. Scientists tell people not to worry.

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Fiction

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Asteroid or comet impacts are a common subgenre of disaster fiction, and such stories typically feature some attempt - successful or unsuccessful - to prevent the catastrophe. Most involve trying to destroy or explosively redirect an object, perhaps understandably from the direction of dramatic interest.

Science Fiction authors Charles Sheffield and Arthur C. Clarke (Sunstorm) have also written of a "cosmic bullet" extraterrestrial intelligence threat consisting of a projectile aimed at our sun at near light speed. In the opening move of the war in the movie Starship Troopers, inspired by a novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein, aliens launch an asteroid at Earth, totally obliterating Buenos Aires. A similar attack is made in one of the Enterprise (Star Trek prequel) episodes, and one is averted in a Stargate episode using technology not yet invented by our reality.

Notable works include:

  • Deep Impact - An attempt by the Messiah spacecraft to plant a number of nuclear bombs on a comet is partially successful. This 1998 movie was based on Arthur C Clarke's 1993 novel "The Hammer of God" about mankind's efforts to try to stop an asteroid from hitting Earth.
  • Armageddon - A pair of modified space shuttles are used to drill a hole in an asteroid and plant a nuclear bomb
  • Meteor - A series of orbital platforms armed with nuclear missiles are used to deflect an asteroid.
  • The Dig - An adventure game written by Steven Spielberg in which astronauts assigned to blow an asteroid off-course are transported to a distant world.
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See also

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See Fiction

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References

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External links

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Spaceguard around Earth

The minor planetsedit
Vulcanoids | Near-Earth asteroids | Main belt | Jupiter Trojans | Centaurs | Damocloids | Comets | Trans-Neptunians (Kuiper belt · Scattered disc · Oort cloud)
For other objects and regions, see: asteroid groups and families, binary asteroids, asteroid moons and the Solar system
For a complete listing, see: List of asteroids. See also Pronunciation of asteroid names and Meanings of asteroid names.
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