Planetary securityPaintballs may deflect an incoming asteroid
With twenty years’ notice, paint pellets could cause an asteroid
to veer off course; researchers say that, if timed just right,
pellets full of paint powder, launched in two rounds from a
spacecraft at relatively close distance, would cover the front
and back of an asteroid, more than doubling its reflectivity, or
albedo; the initial force from the pellets would bump an
asteroid off course; over time, the sun’s photons would deflect
the asteroid even more In the event that a giant asteroid is
headed toward Earth, you had better hope that it is blindingly
white. A pale asteroid would reflect sunlight — and over time,
this bouncing of photons off its surface could create enough of
a force to push the asteroid off its course. How might one
encourage such a deflection? The answer, according to an MIT
graduate student: with a volley or two of space-launched
paintballs. Sung Wook Paek, a graduate student in MIT’s
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautic