{"id":56317,"date":"2018-03-13T16:59:20","date_gmt":"2018-03-13T11:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=56317"},"modified":"2018-03-13T16:59:20","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T11:59:20","slug":"nasa-designs-hammer-to-prevent-an-asteroid-armageddon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tns.world\/?p=56317","title":{"rendered":"NASA designs \u2018hammer\u2019 to prevent an asteroid\u00a0armageddon"},"content":{"rendered":"

London March 13 (TNS):<\/strong> Terrified of an asteroid hitting Earth and wiping us all out? Fret not: NASA has a plan.<\/p>\n

Scientists have drawn up official plans for how to deal with incoming asteroids that could devastate our planet.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a spacecraft called HAMMER, and it stands for Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response.<\/p>\n

It was devised by top experts, including NASA, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and two Energy Department weapons labs,\u00a0according to Buzzfeed.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft has two ways of dispatching an asteroid threat.<\/p>\n

The first involves hitting the asteroid, and then steering it off course so it doesn\u2019t end up hitting Earth.<\/p>\n

The second \u2013 and more dangerous \u2013 would see the HAMMER detonating its onboard nuclear warhead to change the asteroid\u2019s course.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the asteroid is small enough, and we detect it early enough, we can do it with the impactor,\u201d explained physicist David Dearborn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impactor is not as flexible as the nuclear option when we really want to change the speed of the body in a hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n

That could be useful in 2035 when scientists say there is a 1-in- 2,700 chance the Bennu asteroid will hit us.<\/p>\n

The space boulder is currently circling the sun at 63,000 miles per hour and has a very slim chance of slamming into Earth.<\/p>\n

Sadly, NASA\u2019s new plans don\u2019t necessarily mean that the HAMMER spacecraft will ever be built.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also no cost estimate for HAMMER yet, which makes the plans even more tenuous.<\/p>\n

Scientists plan to present the asteroid-blasting system at a conference for asteroid experts in Japan this May.<\/p>\n

If that goes well, it\u2019s much more likely that we\u2019ll see HAMMER become a reality \u2014 TNS\/The Sun<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

London March 13 (TNS): Terrified of an asteroid hitting Earth and wiping us all out? Fret not: NASA has a plan. Scientists have drawn up official plans for how to deal with incoming asteroids that could devastate our planet. It\u2019s a spacecraft called HAMMER, and it stands for Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[732],"class_list":["post-56317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-and-technology","tag-science-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56319,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56317\/revisions\/56319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}