Chinese Engineers Developing Nuclear Bomb-Based Asteroid Destruction Technology — Reports
This undated image made available by NASA shows the asteroid Bennu from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
BEIJING (Sputnik) — A group of Chinese scientists is developing a method for destroying large asteroids with nuclear weapons, the South China Morning Post reported. A team of scientists from the China Rocket Research Institute in Beijing is working on a method for destroying large asteroids that threaten Earth using a nuclear bomb, it said. The idea is as follows: first, a metal impact probe crashes into the asteroid and bores a deep hole, then a second spacecraft drops a nuclear bomb into this hole, which detonates inside the asteroid, the publication said. According to the scientists cited by the newspaper, a three-megaton explosion, roughly equivalent to 200 Hiroshima bombs, could completely destroy an asteroid approximately 100 meters in diameter. The researchers also found that placing a bomb 30 meters below the surface can more than triple the change in an asteroid’s velocity compared to a shallow detonation, making this method «significantly more effective at altering an object’s trajectory.» The newspaper notes that the Chinese scientists’ approach is reminiscent of the 1998 American disaster movie «Armageddon,» but their idea requires that everything be carried out using unmanned spacecraft. According to the researchers, this method is less technically complex and more effective than simply aiming a nuclear charge at an asteroid.
