'It's like a preemptive strike, with less mess,' study author Sung Wook Paek said.
"Surveys that search for these objects discover typically two to three new NEOs every night," Detlef Koschny, European Space Agency Project Scientist, toldThe probability of one of these NEOs hitting Earth any time in the near future is practically zero, and most are too small to require a deflection method. Even so, a major collision is a case of when, not if.
As a result, the MIT team say a kinetic impactor—a projectile that deflects an object through impact—is the only method that is do-able in the near-future. A gravitational keyhole is a usually narrow region that, if an asteroid were to pass it, would put said asteroid on a collision course with Earth."A keyhole is like a door—once it's open, the asteroid will impact Earth soon after, with high probability," lead author Sung Wook Paek told MIT News."Getting to the asteroid before this time might make for an easier deflection than waiting until it is already on its final approach," said Brown.
MIT scientists have devised a decision map for when an asteriod or comet is on collision course with Earth. Pictured: Asteroid 243 Ida, which does not pose a threat to Earth.Using simulations, they tested three alternative missions. The first involved a kinetic impactor—a projectile that interrupts the path of an approaching near-Earth object to knock it off track.
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