Australian_Science_Illustrated_Issue_52_2017

30 | SCIENCE ILLUSTRATED

DEFLECT AND DESTROY

Nuclear Bomb

Pulverises

Space Rock

DESTRUCTION At a short

notice, a nuclear blast is the most

efficient weapon against asteroids.

Scientists from the Los Alamos

National Laboratory in the US have

calculated what would happen, if

the Itokawa asteroid were hit by a

nuclear-armed probe.

ORBITING CRAFT PULLS

AT THE ASTEROID

ATTRACTION Send a probe

to an asteroid and place it in an orbit

slightly displaced from the large rock.

That is the aim of NASA’s Asteroid

Redirect mission in 2021, when a craft

will be sent to an asteroid to steal a

bite of it and orbit beside it. According

to plan, the weak gravitational pull of

the probe will slowly alter the path of

the rock, i.e. the method can be used

in situations, in which the threat is

still far away from Earth.

FLOW OF ROCKS

AND METAL

PROBES WITH LASER

PROBE ORBIT

ASTEROID

SHUTTERSTOCK THE PLANETARY SOCIETY

MIKKEL JUUL JENSEN

1

THE NUCLEAR WARHEAD

is located at the tip of the

probe. The bomb has an

explosive force of 1 megatonne,

corresponding to 60+ Hiroshima

bombs and enough to destroy an

asteroid measuring about 500 m.

2

THE ITOKAWA ASTEROID

was used as a model in a

computer simulation of

what would happen in a nuclear

attack on an asteroid. The 535-m-

long asteroid would be able to

destroy a city, if it struck Earth.

NUCLEAR WARHEAD

ITOKAWA ASTEROID

SOLAR SYSTEM ASTEROIDS