Has anyone heard of any future missions to attempt to change the trajectory of an asteroid?

Question

What are the proposed ideas?
If we can land 2 rovers on mars that have been there for years or land a man on the moon, why can't we find out if we can do this? just in case we have to.

Answer 1

There's inherent problems with this. First, an asteroid isn't usually free of rotation. Most tumble - with rotations ranging from minutes to days.

One idea is to set up solar sails, and allow sunlight to drag the rock further out, or just slowing it's orbital speed. But, the problem with that is the tumbling.

Another is to set up a mass-driver on the rock, and by throwing small chunks of the asteroid itself in one direction, it's trajectory will change slightly with each toss.

Still another is basically a magnifying glas on the surface, heating and eventually sublimating small parts of the surface of an asteroid, creating a small thrust to offset it's trajectory.

The problem with these plans, though, is that we don't know enough about asteroids to have a solution. We know some are icey, some are rock, some are metallic, some are just a pile of little rocks held together by their gravity. What works on one may not work on another.

While I agree with you, this should be mission 1 in priority with all the worlds' space agencies, we really only recognized the danger in the last 25 years or so. Some people are working on it, but more need to.

Answer 2

The Mars Rovers that landed on Mars in 2004 each weighed about 190 Kg.

Apollo 11 Command Module was 5,557 kg.

Saturn 5, used for the Apollo 11 mission 2,847,590 kg

Asteroid 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kg (for example).

The probability of a major asteroid impact is extremely low & right now, there's nothing we can realistically do about it.

We don't do anything major to protect cities from the threat of something falling off an airliner at 30,000+ feet - but it's happened in the past.

Answer 3

Well, changing the course of an asteroid is quite different from landing rovers on Mars. If we want to change the course of an asteroid, I assume we're doing so because it poses a threat to us. If it poses a threat, then it's big (for an asteroid) and therefore very, very massive. Changing its course involves a lot more than just launching a rocket at it. Do you want to use nukes to nudge it (which is currently against an international treaty), or do you want to attach a rocket to it that constantly pushes. If you use the rocket, where do you get propellant? It's not an easy question.

Answer 4

The B612 foundation is trying to do that, but so far there is no funded mission.