ASTEROID IMPACT

AVOIDANCE
BY
B.VENKATESH
14761A2107

HISTORY

FORMATION
Asteroids are leftovers from
the formation of our
solar system about 4.6 billion
years ago. Early on, the birth
of Jupiter prevented any
planetary bodies from forming
in the gap between Mars and
Jupiter, causing the small
objects that were there to
collide with each other and
fragment into the asteroids
seen today.

DISCOVERY

The first asteroid to be

discovered, Ceres, was found in 1801
by Giuseppe Piazzi and was
originally considered to be a new
planet
This was followed by the discovery of
other similar bodies, which, with the
equipment of the time, appeared to
be points of light, like stars, showing
little or no planetary disc, though
readily distinguishable from stars due
to their apparent motions.
This prompted the astronomer
Sir William Herschel to propose the
term "asteroid coined in Greek as
meaning 'star-like, star-shaped'
In the early second half of the
nineteenth century, the terms
"asteroid" and "planet" (not always
qualified as "minor") were still used
interchangeably.

Ceres
Discoveredby GiuseppePiazzi
Discoverydate

1January
1801

TYPES OF ASTEROIDS
SpectralType

SimilartoWhat
Meteorite
Type

Type C

carbonaceous
Chondrite

Type S

LL Chondrite

Type M

iron meteorite

Recent&UpcomingEarthasteroidencounters
Asteroid

Date
(UT)

Miss
Size
Distance

2016PS26

Aug 25

13.8 LD

34 m

2016QA2

Aug 28

0.2 LD

40 m

2016 PA40

Aug 29

14.5 LD

54 m

2004 BO41

Sep 7

38.9 LD

1.1 km

2015 KE

Sep 10

14.9 LD

23 m

2009 UG

Sep 30

7.3 LD

101 m

2100 RaShalom

Oct 9

58.3 LD

1.1 km

Collision avoidance strategies

Various collision avoidance techniques have different trade-offs with respect to

metrics such as overall performance, cost, operations, and technology readiness

There are various methods for changing the course of an asteroid/ comet .
These can be differentiated by various types of attributes such as the type of
mitigation (deflection or fragmentation), energy source (kinetic, electromagnetic,
gravitational, solar/thermal, or nuclear), and approach strategy
(interception, rendezvous, or remote station).

Strategies fall into two basic sets: destruction and delay .Fragmentation
concentrates on rendering the impactor harmless by fragmenting it and
scattering the fragments so that they miss the Earth or burn up in the
atmosphere.

Delay exploits the fact that both the Earth and the impactor are in orbit. An
impact occurs when both reach the same point in space at the same time, or
more correctly when some point on Earth's surface intersects the impactor's orbit
when the impactor arrives.

Since the Earth is approximately 12,750 km in diameter and moves at approx.

30 km per second in its orbit, it travels a distance of one planetary diameter in
about 425 seconds, or slightly over seven minutes. Delaying, or advancing the
impactor's arrival by times of this magnitude can, depending on the exact
geometry of the impact, cause it to miss the Earth.

Types of Collision avoidance

strategies

Nuclear explosive device

Kinetic impact
Asteroid gravity tractor
Ion beam shepherd
Use of focused solar energy
Mass driver
Conventional rocket engine
Asteroid Laser Ablation
Other proposals

Nuclear explosive device

Kineticimpact

The impact of a massive

object, such as a spacecraft or
even another near-Earth
object, is another possible
solution to a pending NEO
impact. An object with a high
mass close to the Earth could
be sent out into a collision
course with the asteroid,
knocking it off course.
When the asteroid is still far
from the Earth, a means of
deflecting the asteroid is to
directly alter its momentum by
colliding a spacecraft with the
asteroid.

Asteroidgravitytractor

One more alternative to explosive deflection is to move the

asteroid slowly over a time. Tiny constant thrust accumulates to
deviate an object sufficiently from its predicted course. Edward T.
Lu and Stanley G. Love have proposed using a large heavy
unmanned spacecraft hovering over an asteroid to gravitationally
pull the latter into a non-threatening orbit. The spacecraft and the
asteroid mutually attract one another. If the spacecraft counters
the force towards the asteroid by, e.g., an ion thruster, the net
effect is that the asteroid is accelerated towards the spacecraft and
thus slightly deflected from its orbit. While slow, this method has
the advantage of working irrespective of the asteroid composition
or spin rate rubble pile asteroids would be difficult to deflect by
means of nuclear detonations while a pushing device would be
hard or inefficient to mount on a fast rotating asteroid. A gravity
tractor would likely have to spend several years beside the
asteroid to be effective.