DEATH FROM ABOVE

NASA scientists have finally caught up with Hollywood scriptwriters and are currently drafting a plan to land an astronaut on an asteroid in order to figure out if we have any way of stopping one of those rocks if they come hurtling on a doomsday mission to Earth. “There’s a lot of public resonance with the notion that NASA ought to be doing something about killer asteroids,” explained Chris McKay of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, adding that we need an exploratory mission because “we don’t know enough about asteroids right now to know the best strategy for mitigation.” While the future of deflecting asteroids is still many decades away, the proposed ideas include planting thrusters on an asteroid to nudge it from its path, placing an object in the path to knock it off course, or using mirrors, lights and paint to change the way the object absorbs light and heat in order to gently change its direction over many years. And, if that isn’t exciting enough, taking the rock out with missiles is also being studied. At the moment Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is tracking 831 “potentially hazardous asteroids” which might one day collide with Earth. They also claim that it is 750 times more likely that you will be killed by an asteroid than that you will win this weekend’s lottery. (The Guardian)