Star Wars: We’re “shooting” at asteroids that would hit Earth. The technique is called “kinetic impact deflection” and we’ve been studying it for years.
The plot is somewhat reminiscent of Armageddon, a 2008 film starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler, directed by Michael Bay and in its own way becoming a cult hit. In the film, scientists discover that a huge asteroid, the size of the State of Texas, is heading towards Earth, which will hit within 18 days with catastrophic consequences. The only solution, with such a short time interval available, is to blow up the celestial body with a nuclear bomb, placed directly inside: the task falls on a drilling expert (Bruce Willis) and his team.
What is humanity’s plan if an asteroid threatens to hit the Earth
Now, it’s worth noting that everything about the nuclear bomb and landing a spacecraft on a speeding meteorite is fiction, while what comes before might turn out to be reality sooner or later: for now, we don’t know when, but a meteoric impact on Earth is on the list of possibilities. That’s why scientists are trying everything to be ready, should the emergency occur.
There is a team of scientists who have been playing Asteroids in real life for 2 decades – if another pop reference is needed: it’s the vector graphics video game where you accumulate points by shooting at the asteroids of the name. The effects, live, are the same: Galactic rocks shrink or fall apart.
How kinetic impact deflection works to save the world from a meteor
The results of a 20-year-long shooting spree were presented at the 84th annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society, held in Chicago this month. What does the evidence gathered by the space shooters suggest? Apparently, the success of the “shot” would depend on the type of asteroid and the number of shots taken.
The apparently most effective technique involves changing the trajectory of the celestial body, causing an impact between the meteorite and a much smaller, less massive object, the projectile. The idea is called “kinetic impact deflection”: by slightly altering the direction of the celestial body, it is possible to avoid a catastrophic impact with the earth’s ground, avoiding – in the worst case – what happened with the asteroid that caused the dinosaurs extinction.
Giuseppe Giordano