American scientists from the University of California at Santa Barbara have proposed a method to protect the Earth from large (up to 60 meters) asteroids, whose approach could not be detected in advance. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Astrophysics.
As an example, astrophysicists took the asteroid NT1, which flew at a safe distance from Earth in the summer of 2023. If a space rock were to hit a planet, the explosion would be about three times more powerful than the asteroid impact that hit Chelyabinsk in 2013.
Previous experiments had shown that it was possible to change an asteroid’s orbit; but for this, the impending threat must be detected long before the object approaches the Earth. Scientists have suggested using the “spraying” method if impact is only a few days away. This involves attacking an asteroid with a special rocket that will release a cloud of explosive charges and kinetic impact elements towards the rock.
Given the typical density and composition of asteroids, this approach would break the space rock into pieces no larger than 10 meters in diameter, allowing them to burn up safely in the atmosphere. Even if the fragmentation occurred only a few hours before impacting Earth, the resulting debris cloud would pose a limited risk to Earthlings.
According to the researchers, modeling showed that preparing and launching such a rocket would not take more than a day. Scientists emphasized that today humanity has all the technologies to create such planetary protection.
Earlier astronomers statedIt is stated that there are at least 14 thousand potentially dangerous and yet undiscovered asteroids around the world.