If a giant asteroid once falls to Earth, then all of humanity will end. In order not only to avoid such sad prospects for all living things, but also, apparently, along the way to inspire the creation of a remake of "Armageddon", a group of scientists is exploring the possibility of shooting down potentially dangerous asteroids for the Earth with nuclear charges. No kidding.
Shoot down asteroids with nuclear charges. It sounds like science fiction, but among scientists working in the field of planetary security - the department dealing with the security of the Earth from external space threats - this idea is of great interest.
At a press conference by the American Geophysical Union this week, researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory and NASA's Goddard Space Center discussed the best ways to keep the Earth safe from extinction from asteroid threats. As part of these discussions, two really interesting ideas were proposed: kinetic impact projectiles, which will change the trajectories of comets and asteroids to orbits that are safer for the Earth, and a more radical solution in the form of direct nuclear strikes that will incinerate dangerous asteroids and other space objects.
Scientists know more than 15,000 near-earth objects that could potentially pose a potential threat to our planet. The issue of planetary security - the concept of our defense against the external space threats described above - was first considered several decades ago, but only this year its relevance has increased more than ever. Especially after the NASA aerospace agency officially established the Coordination Center to Protect the Earth from Asteroids and Other Space Threats.
Interestingly, despite its recent discovery, the center is designed to protect against "potentially dangerous" objects (larger than 30-50 meters in diameter), located within 0.5 AU. e. (astronomical units) from Earth is already working on several very interesting projects. These include the OSIRIS-Rex space mission, which is tasked with delivering asteroid soil samples to Earth (launched in September this year), as well as the Asteroid Redirect Mission (AIM), whose goal is to visit a near-Earth object and move it into a stable near-lunar orbit. …
Missions such as OSIRIS-Rex and AIM are just the first steps towards understanding the real level of threats from near-Earth objects. However, the development of adequate and effective methods of repelling these threats is a matter of a completely different level.
“It is very important that we can shorten our response time to these threats,” says Joseph Nate of NASA's Goddard Space Center.
“So that situations like the one that happened with the comet C / 2013 A1, which arrived to us from the Oort cloud, missed a close distance with Mars and which we knew only 22 months earlier, in January 2013, would never happen again. … If astronomers under similar conditions found an object the size of C / 2013 A1 and it was on the trajectory of a collision with the Earth, then now we most likely would not be talking to you,”says Nat.
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In the distant future, Nat sees a well-defended Earth, guarded by a small fleet of special "observation spacecraft", which, like bloodhounds, will look for objects in the darkness of space that carry a potential threat to our planet. When such objects are detected, they will collect all available information and transmit it to the "interceptor spacecraft" on Earth.
“Observers will be able to collect all the necessary and important information about such objects: size, speed and angle of rotation, shape and orbit. Ideally, as soon as an object with a high level of collision with the Earth is detected, one or more interceptors will be sent to it within a year,”says Nat.
Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Katharina Plesko uses supercomputers to create efficient models of asteroid reflection scenarios and believes that in the future decades and centuries, the option of using kinetic projectiles will be more effective and at the same time less radical. And if the objects turn out to be very large, and the interceptor spacecraft do not have enough time to reach them in time, then targeted nuclear strikes may become a possible solution.
“A kinetic projectile is essentially a huge cannonball,” says Plesko.
“This technology can really be useful, as it will intercept objects moving at a very high speed. But if more energy is needed to change the trajectory or destroy an object, then a nuclear charge is the best tool."
"Nuclear charges can hold incredible amounts of energy and still be very low in mass," adds Robert Weaver of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“Most of the energy generated in a nuclear explosion comes from ionizing radiation, which heats up and vaporizes the surfaces of all objects in the vicinity. In the event of a nuclear detonation near an asteroid, it will cause a very sharp impact in the direction opposite to the movement of the asteroid. It is quite possible that the power of the charge will be enough even to completely destroy the object,”continues Weaver.
The ideas seem to be interesting, but it's too early to rejoice. Since you need to understand that none of these options NASA or anyone else has given any "green light" yet. For now, these ideas only exist as models inside supercomputers and in the imaginations of scientists. Although it must be admitted that they have taken on a clearer outline recently, thanks to the launch of the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (abbreviated as HAMMER) by NASA's aerospace agency last year.
Plesko, Weaver, Nat and their colleagues plan to continue work on the HAMMER project next year and consider some specific aspects of the problems and issues that have developed, including one in which it will be discussed the required number of nuclear charges to be used against comets and asteroids of different sizes. It is more important for scientists now to bring real attention to the issue of planetary security, so more specific ideas will be considered later.
“Natural disasters happen all the time. And this particular cataclysm can become a subject that we can really foresee and prevent,”sums up Galen Giesler from Los Alamos National Laboratory.
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK