Armogeddon: 2036

According to Dr. Scheeres and Dr. Dan Durda of the Southwest Research Institute, the tidal forces will inevitably strain the asteroid, causing “localized shifts” or quakes on its surface and within its interior. If the asteroid has a lower than expected density – less than half that of water (999.9 kg/m3 at 0 degrees C) – Apophis could be either reshaped or completely disrupted.

At the same time there are no shortage of ideas on how to deflect asteroids, which come from the scientific community, fiction writers, technicians as well as movie-makers. For instance, the Advanced Concepts Team at the European Space Agency has been involved for years in designing a range of satellites and rockets to nudge asteroids on a collision course for Earth into a different orbit. No technology or technical innovations have been left unconsidered, even potentially dangerous ideas such as nuclear powered spacecraft.

One of the favored method is to throw a spacecraft at an asteroid in order to modify its orbit and direction. European Space Agency (ESA) plans to test this idea with its Don Quixote mission which is an asteroid deflection precursor mission, designed to assess and validate the technology that one day could be used to deflect an asteroid threatening the Earth. It uses two spacecrafts , one of them, Hidalgo, will collide with the asteroid at high speed, while the other, Sancho, will measure the change in the object’s orbit. The actual probes might be launched in 2014-2016.The primary objective of the Don Quixote mission is to impact the target Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) and to be able to determine the deflection resulting from the impact. To achieve this, it will measure with extreme accuracy the asteroid’s position in space before and after impact. There is also a secondary objective, involving the so-called Autonomous Surface Package Deployment Engineering experiment (ASP-DeX). In this experiment a small device, an Autonomous Surface Package or ASP, would be released from the Orbiter spacecraft while it’s on orbit about the asteroid. It would then passively free-fall towards the asteroid surface after its release, and touchdown within a certain distance of a target landmark, most likely the crater resulting from the impact of the Hidalgo spacecraft.

Scientists at Strathclyde and Glasgow universities also began computer simulations to work out the feasibility analysis of changing the directions of asteroids on a collision course for Earth. The Russians are now planning two missions to asteroids within the next 5 years to study their chemical nature, trajectories, behavior patterns in space and possible ways of their control. All this means that the international scientific community, decision-makers and world leaders are aware about NEA hazard and try to charter an integrated approach to this cosmic problem. Together people of different races and nationalities in various countries of the world will prevent Armageddon or apocalypses in the name of eternal Life.