Bombs. As far as Hollywood is concerned, that's the answer for asteroids and comets. Nuclear weapons are used in movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon.
If astronomer spotted a dangerous incoming space rock, planetary defense experts say the safest and best answer would be to ram it with a small spaceship.
That's what NASA is getting ready to do on Monday, when they'll attempt to hit an asteroid.
The impact will be the culmination of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, a more than $300 million effort which launched a space vehicle in November of 2021.
This is not about disrupting. Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead at the University Applied Physics Laboratory, says that the planned collision isn't going to blow up the asteroid.
There is no threat to Earth posed by the target asteroid, called Dimorphos. The asteroid is about 525 feet across.
NASA doesn't think their test could turn the space rocks into a threat.
Thomas Zurbuchen is an associate administrator for the science mission directorate at NASA. It's not possible because of the things that happen.
The impact should shorten the time it takes for Dimorphos to reach its larger asteroid pal. A full circuit can take up to 11 hours. The DART impact should change the path of Dimorphos so that it can move closer to the big asteroid and take less time to travel around.
Two asteroids are so far away that telescopes can see them as a single point of light. Scientists will be able to see the asteroid they're trying to hit for the first time with images from the DART camera.
The larger and easier-to-spot asteroid will initially be targeted, but the navigation systems will switch to Dimorphos in the last hour of the mission.
In real time, the space agency will show the images on its website. As the spaceship hurtles towards it, dimorphos will grow larger and larger. The pictures will stop when the crash happens.
A small craft nearby will be watching and sending images back to Earth. Astronomers will be able to measure how the asteroid's path changed after the collision with telescopes on all 7 continents.
In a couple of years, the European Space Agency will send a mission called Hera out to the double asteroid system to gather more information on the impact's effects.
Scientists can use this information to prepare for future threats by learning how an asteroid reacts to a push.
Ed Lu is the executive director of the Asteroid Institute and he says it's a great thing. Someday, we will find an asteroid which has a high chance of hitting the Earth, and we will want to divert it.
We should have some experience knowing that this would work when that happens.
The people working on the DART mission know that their project can sound far out.
An asteroid is being moved. The motion of a body in space is being changed. Tom Statler is a DART program scientist. It's stuff of science fiction books and Star Trek from when I was a kid, and now it's true. It's kind of amazing that we're doing that, and what that means for the future of what we can do.
There are a lot of space rocks that could cause extinction. No one currently threatens Earth. If an asteroid the size of Dimorphos were to crash into a city, it could cause a lot of damage.
NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office wants to launch the asteroid-hunting space telescope NEO Surveyor if Congress gives them enough money.
Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer, says that "it's something that we need to get done so that we know what's out there and know what's coming."
He says there is plenty of time to come up with a solution, whether it's a DART or something else, because there is a telescope that could give Earthlings years or decades of warning about space rocks.
The way that Hollywood portrays saving the planet is completely different.
He says, "They have to make it exciting, you know, we find the asteroid only 18 days before it's going to impact, and everyone runs around with their hair on fire." That's not the way to defend planets.
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