REAL LIFE NEWS: BLASTING HOLES IN ASTEROIDS
by Hazed
There’s another asteroid heading in our direction and although scientists are not agreed that it’s not going to hit us, it’s going to come close in the year 2032. You can read about it here.
Even if this one turns out to be a near miss, it’s only a matter of time before one targets the Earth head on, so we really do need to find a way to deal with approaching objects that doesn’t involve Bruce Willis and a nuke (see the film Armageddon – implausible but enjoyable).
All of this talk of killer asteroids is not really relevant to what this story is about. You see, Japanese scientists have just tested a space cannon that they plan to use to blast a hole in an asteroid. Now, their intention is not to destroy the asteroid or even deflect it, it’s all to get data about the composition of the rock, but I am sure if they scale the cannon up it could be just what we need to protect against being pummeled from space by a massive rock!
Anyway, fantasizing about destroying or deflecting asteroids aside, the idea of the space cannon is that it will be used as part of a mission to asteroid 199JU3, orbiting between Earth and Mars, to gather data that couldn’t be got by just scanning the surface of the body.
The plan is to mount the cannon onto the Hayabusa-2 vehicle. When the craft reaches the asteroid it’ll release the weapon and allow it to float downwards. The craft will move around to the opposite side of the asteroid and then remotely trigger the cannon, which will use an explosive charge to fire a 4lb “bullet” into the surface. Then the ship will come back around to the site of the explosion, land and scoop up the debris to bring back to Earth.
The mission schedule means the blast will happen in mid-2018, and the probe will arrive back on Earth with its bits of asteroid around 2020.
