With asteroid close encounters becoming more frequent and Russia planning on launching missiles at one passing by Earth in 2036, as previously reported by HNGN, scientists are looking for new ways to avoid potential destruction. Now, a new study by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists examines a technique called kinetic impact that diverts asteroids using a spacecraft to crash into their bodies at high speeds.
The approach is designed to deliver the momentum of the spacecraft while at the same time boosting the momentum of the asteroid through the production of an impact crater ejecta that eclipses the asteroid's escape velocity. Furthermore, the team reveals that this asteroid deflection technique is sensitive to asteroid characteristics including strength, porosity, rotation and shape.
The team simulated a range of conditions for target asteroids and revealed that increases in asteroid strength decrease the delivered momentum impulse, and also discovered that for asteroids with constant sizes, additional porosity can increase the rate of effective deflections.
"Asteroids are naturally diverse, and researchers have little direct information about their mechanical properties," Megan Syal, lead author on the paper, said in a press release. "This study emphasizes the important role of asteroid characterization research, which is needed to constrain the different types of conditions that could be encountered at potential deflection targets."
The kinetic impact approach is one of the more promising techniques for avoiding asteroid collisions and is ideal for cases when the warning time is known ahead of time and the size of the asteroid is not too large.
The current results provide new information regarding the range of possibilities during the use of this technique and can benefit the design of future kinetic impact deflection attempts.
The findings were published in the Jan. 14 issue of Icarus.
