Many space experts including Dr Iain McDonald and physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson believe that life will be wiped off from the earth's surface following a deadly asteroid hit. In order to protect the planet from a dangerous asteroid collision, NASA, the United States space agency has apparently finished developing its planetary defence weapon which will deviate the asteroid from its original trajectory. In the meantime, Russia's space agency Roscosmos has also started its planetary protection mission.
Monitoring near-earth objects
Roscosmos is now planning to create a centre devoted to monitoring space bodies like comets, meteors, and asteroid to ensure they do not collide with the earth.
"As part of the creation of a monitoring system and information support for the safety of space activities in near-Earth space, we plan to launch the Russian Center for Small Celestial Bodies, whose main task will be to detect and track celestial bodies approaching Earth," Igor Bakaras, a senior official at Roscosmos subsidiary TsNIIMash told Sputnik.
Russian authorities will approve the centre in mid-2020, and it will remain operational until 2030. Roscosmos is also planning to build a series of advanced telescopes on the moon to track potentially hazardous near-earth objects.
Nuclear weapons to safeguard the earth
A section of space experts believes that NASA's plans to change the trajectory of asteroids will not work well with giant space rocks. As per these experts, nuking the asteroid could be the only option to protect the planet from large asteroids.
However, nuking an asteroid will result in radioactive rain that will turn harmful to life on earth. In order to solve this issue, space scientist Samantha Rolfe puts forward the idea of a pre-emptive strike. The concept of the pre-emptive strike is pretty simple; humans should blow up dangerous asteroids on one of its close prior close-earth visits.
