Asteroid Problems

What If an Asteroid headed our way?


In life there are so many things that we can predict as well as things that we can not. Asteroids are one of the things that is hard to predict until there is little time to act. NASA for quite some time now has been creating plans to deal with such a scenario just like what is featured in the movie Armageddon. However in the movie the end result is a bit unrealistic and would not happen in a real world scenario. The plan that I found that NASA has been working on is somewhat similar to what people were wanting to do in Armageddon.

The plan starts out that NASA would send out space shuttles to analyze the asteroid so that we could further understand it and better predict where it might hit the Earth. Based on their readings they predict that they have about 8 years to deal with the asteroid.
 After learning of this possibility NASA launches two space craft carrying multiple kinetic impactors towards the asteroid. These kinetic impactors are meant not to destroy the asteroid but to try and change its course. The result of the kinetic impactors may or may not work but in their scenario, they manage to deter most of the asteroid but a good size chunk has broken off and has a 100% chance of hitting the Earth. In the scenario NASA did not have a plan on stopping this chunk but they were trying to determine the impact point. While the chunk may hit the Earth, the effects will not be world ending but that's not good enough.

This scenario is probably not the one that you want, while it may solve the problem at large it does not eliminate the problem at large. The fact that NASA might resort to using is kind of concerning because it shows that they are not completely capable of stopping this kind of event yet. However, this plan is better than nothing and does stop a world ending event but not entirely.

Comments

  1. Prof. Chris FragileSeptember 27, 2019 at 5:29 PM

    OK, you need to be more clear in your writing. I believe what you are discussing here is an exercise scenario that NASA went through to begin planning for a possible future real event. Indeed, in this scenario, a piece of the asteroid impacts the Earth. But, again, this was just an exercise, which tried to cover numerous scenarios. What I was looking for was more of a discussion of how NASA was going to deal with the asteroid in space.

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