Crash course in saving the Earth: Chinese simulation stops asteroid strike without using nukes

Computer model shows how potentially hazardous asteroids can be knocked off course and out of harm’s way using an ‘enhanced kinetic impactor’ spacecraft

Nasa advocates the use of nuclear weapons to neutralise such threats, but the option is not without controversy

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In the computer simulation, EKI’s mission to save the Earth takes just under four years. Image: Handout

Published: 10:00pm, 29 May 2020Updated: 5:06am, 30 May 2020

Chinese scientists have come up with an ingenious alternative to nuclear obliteration for neutralising the threat of potentially Earth-shattering asteroids – staging a cosmic collision to knock the offending rocky mass off course.

Ever since discovering that a 10km-diameter (6 mile-diameter) asteroid was most likely to blame for the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, the world’s scientific community has been looking for ways to ensure the human race does not suffer the same fate.

While Nasa has long advocated the use of nuclear weapons to neutralise the threat of so-called potentially hazardous asteroids, detonating a warhead in space is not without its problems or controversy.

The alternative, according to a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is to send an unmanned spacecraft out to meet the incoming threat and deflect it out of harm’s way.

However, to have sufficient heft to do that, the spacecraft must first bulk up, which it does by collecting rocks from a near-Earth asteroid en route.

An artist’s impression shows how an enhanced kinetic impactor gathers weight and makes a beeline for the incoming asteroid. Image: Handout