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How can we avoid a catastrophic comet?

There are several ways of trying to deflect an on-coming asteroid. The first is to try the “ Hollywood approach ” and simply blow it up!

However, in spite of the possibly spectacular visuals that could result from “nuking it”, the shattered asteroid could merely become a swarm of slightly smaller and still very destructive space rocks heading towards our planet.

Really, this would only be considered at a very, very last resort.

Another way would be to just give the asteroid a nudge, to change its path away from the Earth.

Knocking it with some sort of impact could do this. Or maybe an unmanned spacecraft with enough mass could be put in orbit about the asteroid to effectively change the “gravitational pull” and alter the trajectory that way.

Orbiting around and landing on a comet may seem like the stuff of Star Trek.

However this was actually achieved in 2014 by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta space craft which also sent a small lander called Philae down to the comet’s surface.
However, Rosetta took a decade to get to its comet destination.

So if the the asteroid encounters needed to deflect a Earth directed impact are to be effective, the asteroid would need to be detected many years in advance and shoved or pulled many million of kilometers from Earth

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psi said:

Why titanium?

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I just realized how to prevent an asteroid from destroying the Earth after 2 beers.

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SinSemilla said:

So is there any huge asteroid heading to earth I find it fascinating it travels at 55K mph and we can see it's traveling towards earth and when it will hit it.    It just won't come out of nowhere and hit us , we will see it coming for years

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