6equ35

[6EQUJ5]

There are massive asteroids out there of course but if one did come our way,say 5 miles across,could we actually do anything about it or do NASA keep quite and get pissed up waiting for the bang,it seems a bit of waste of time taking notes and observations under the circumstances

It may be that this asteroid was below the size that NASA would deem to be dangerous, their searches being for bigger asteroids. Last year they picked out an asteroid that would not arrive anywhere near Earth at all and was a 5 year journey away. They sent an unmanned craft to deflect it as an experiment. It worked. I think that they just attached rockets to it and fired them up.

Most thought on this seems to be about deflecting an asteroid up or down, left or right. But I have another thought. If an asteroid is going to hit Earth in 5 years and do serious damage, why not either slow it down or speed it up. Think of it, the calculation is that the asteroid is moving in a straight line towards where Earth will be in its orbit around the Sun in 5 years time. Simply slow the asteroid down so that it arrives too late to hit Earth or speed it up so that it arrives too early at that point in the Earth's orbit before Earth has arrived there. Put rockets on its front firing it backwards or put rockets on its rear firing forwards.

If we detect that an asteroid is going to hit Earth, then the sooner that we detect it the better. The further away that it is when we can detect it the less force it will take to alter its progress such that it misses Earth.