Can We Alter an Asteroid’s Orbit to Protect Earth? Forget NASA DART – Find Out the Surprising Answer!

An asteroid has the potential to pose a significant danger to Earth, potentially resulting in a catastrophic event depending on its size. Consequently, it is crucial and time-sensitive to address the threat posed by asteroids that may collide with our planet. One approach to mitigate this risk involves finding methods to modify an asteroid’s trajectory, diverting it away from Earth. NASA has previously attempted this by intentionally colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid, successfully altering its orbit. Presently, a company has devised a clever solution to tackle this issue.

A California-based nonprofit is working to address this threat by designing a new asteroid deflection system that uses the space rock’s own regolith to change its trajectory away from Earth.

“We were looking at objects of a similar size [to the 2013 Chelyabinsk asteroid] that could touch Earth’s atmosphere in our lifetime,” Nahum Melamed, project director at The Aerospace Corporation, told Gizmodo in an interview. He added that an asteroid can be moved out of its orbit with a system that only lasts “a few weeks of operation.”

How will the plan be implemented?

According to Melamed, a suborbital accelerator will be launched on that asteroid. The ship locks onto the asteroid and starts taking small scoops of regolith (a layer of dense rocky material) and ejecting it – 20 pounds per scoop. That would be enough to move an asteroid away.

“By pushing it away from the asteroid, the asteroid retracts and deviates slightly,” Gizmodo quoted Melamed as saying.

According to The Aerospace Corporation, a small asteroid between 30 and 60 meters in length can be deflected in a few weeks, but a larger asteroid can take up to months.

Scientists believe that this method would be easier than NASA’s DART mission, which was also quite expensive – it cost more than $300 million, and according to some estimates, it was $340 million.

Carrying out this task requires years of research and development work, but there are no guarantees of success. If it works though, bending asteroids and comet attacks wouldn’t be such a big problem. That the problem is very much there is clear from the Chelyabinsk asteroid explosion that injured thousands of people. It exploded in mid-air over the city on February 15, 2013.