On: The World Will Soon Witness "One of the Rarest Space Events of Our Lives"

[turtle_heck]

> "Further observations ruled out a collision in 2029, as well as in 2036 and 2068, though they will still be close encounters."

Since we know it's going to come back around, couldn't we hit it with a couple of hydrogen bombs on it's way past us to ensure that it's knocked far off course for it's next orbit?

[dylan604 → turtle_heck]

That was the point of NASA's DART mission to see if providing a slight "nudge" could alter the orbit rather than trying to blow it up.

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/dart

[sandworm101 → turtle_heck]

Maybe, but there is much debate about whether bombs would do anything to predictably alter the orbit. We might just make it worse.

[EvanAnderson → turtle_heck]

Busting it into a bunch of fragments of unpredictable size and shape seems like a pretty bad idea. If we wanted to change its course parking a spacecraft on it that has the ability to throw asteroid mass off in a known direction seems like a better idea.

[BurningFrog → turtle_heck]

Turning it into thousands of still very big fragments traveling in roughly the same orbit is a fantastically bad idea!