NASA is planning to launch a nuclear spacecraft named Hammer (Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response) that would shunt or blow up threatening space rocks. Preparing itself to protect life on Earth from a potential asteroid attack, NASA has developed this eight-tonne spacecraft that would be capable of deflecting a huge space rock, in case it happens to hit planet Earth, IANS said in its report on Friday.
Bennu, a 1600-foot-wide asteroid, is considered to be a Near Earth Object or an NEO, that would be hitting Earth with 1,450 megatons of TNT. Although the risk is slightly less, Bennu is reported to have been circling around the sun at the speed of 63,000 mph and is at a comfortable distance of 54 million miles from the Earth.
The Osiris-Rex mission by NASA is already on its way to Bennu to collect samples and experts have calculated the time and expense that would be required to stop or destroy the asteroid that was discovered in 1999. Since its discovery, Bennu has regularly been monitored and experts have calculated that the time needed to build the spacecraft, Hammer, is 7.4 years, to the craft hitting the asteroid.
In its report, IANS quoted Dante Lauretta, a professor at the University of Arizona who said that Bennu’s impact would be three times higher than all the nuclear arms exploded in the past. She went on to say that the asteroid would release energy equal to 1,450 megatons of TNT. However, the study also said that Earth required years of warning to bring the deterrent plan in action.
Earth has been hit by asteroids with much regularity but most of them were too minute to bring about major destruction and many fell in scantly populated areas causing minimal damage. According to the report, it is said that the Near-Earth Object Studies centre in NASA recorded 73 asteroids that have a one in 1,600 chance of hitting planet Earth.
