The possibility of a steroid hitting our planet has been making rounds from quite some time. The same has already inspired Hollywood to capture the eventuality on screen. However, the risks of such an event actually happening was assigned a probability of 1 in 250,000 for the steroid Apophis, the most likely threat known as of today. As per NASA’s estimates Apophis would pass within 1800 miles of our planet by the year 2029, but the agency has ruled out the chances of any chances of a hit.
However, Russians seem to be getting for the ‘worst case scenario,’ in case such an eventuality actually happens. Russian scientists are planning to send a spacecraft designed to roadblock the steroid and send it on to a safer orbit. As per scientist Anatoly Perminov, “People’s lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people.”
As per Perminov, the blueprint of the plan still requires work and he offered an invitation to other well-known space agencies like NASA and ESA for their participation.
There have been a lot of theories on how to avert the collision which includes, apart from the above-mentioned, changing the trajectory of the steroid using mirrors, paints, lights to enable enough heat absorption for a change in trajectory.