![]() ![]() These results have implications for deflecting a real asteroid, the team suggests. It’s capable of launching projectiles at over four miles per second, far faster than a rifle. NASA’s Ames Vertical Gun Range in California was built in the 1960s to help scientists better understand how moon craters form. The team turned to an Apollo-era facility to test how the meteorites responded to high-speed impacts. Importantly, both types are representative of the near-Earth asteroids that pose the largest risk to our planet. The remainder were ordinary chondrites, which typically contain less carbon. ![]() ![]() Roughly half of the meteorites belonged to a type known as carbonaceous chondrites, which tend to be relatively rich in carbon and water. (The largest, roughly the size of a fist and weighing one pound, cost the team about $900.) Over the course of many years, the researchers amassed 32 meteorites, most purchased from private dealers. “It’s hard to talk museum curators into giving you a big piece of a meteorite so you can turn it into dust,” Dr. But meteorites are a much better sample, he said, because they’re fragments of asteroids. Similar laboratory studies in the past have mostly shot projectiles at terrestrial rocks. But scientists have since come to realize that achieving such a direct, catastrophic hit is a serious challenge. The leading idea back then was to launch a projectile that would shatter the space rock into pieces small enough to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, said George Flynn, a physicist at State University of New York, Plattsburgh. In the 1960s, scientists began seriously considering what to do with an asteroid on a collision course with our planet. Their results suggest that whether we’re able to knock an asteroid away from our planet could depend on what kind of space rock we’re faced with, and how many times we hit it. These observations shed light on how an asteroid might respond to a high-velocity impact intended to deflect it away from Earth.Īt the 84th annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society held in Chicago this month, researchers presented findings from all of that high-powered marksmanship. Using a specially designed gun, they’ve repeatedly fired projectiles at meteorites and measured how the space rocks recoiled and, in some cases, shattered. But whether it’s Bennu or another asteroid, the question will be how to avoid a very unwelcome cosmic rendezvous.įor almost 20 years, a team of researchers has been preparing for such a scenario. Scientists have in fact spotted one candidate - Bennu, which has a small chance of banging into our planet in the year 2182. There’s probably a large space rock out there, somewhere, that has Earth in its cross hairs. ![]()
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