An update to my post on Sandia’s asteroid deflection model. This is the same Sandia work, now with the numbers from the paper in Icarus, via ScienceDaily.
What’s new
- Hitting the same irregular asteroid with X-rays from one direction changed its speed by 3.9 mm/s. From another direction, only 0.8 mm/s. That’s nearly a fivefold difference.
- The model rebuilds an asteroid from flyby 3D images, then varies the blast’s strength, distance and direction, and maps how much surface vaporizes.
- Limits: it only models surface rocks breaking up, not the whole asteroid. And you’d need good shape data from every side, which you might not have time to get.
Nathan Moore: “Pick the right side and you win. Guess wrong and it could be a bad day.”
God Bless, and Happy hacking!
