Russian Rocket To Knock Away Asteroid
Russian is trying to determine if they should send a rocket to the asteroid Apophis. The 885 foot asteroid was discovered in 2004.
Anatoly Perminov said the space agency is meeting to assess the situation. “I don’t remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032. People’s lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people. Calculations show that it’s possible to create a special purpose spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision without destroying it (the asteroid) and without detonating any nuclear charges. The threat of collision can be averted.”