To Deflect Asteroids From Earth, Deploy Paintballs By The Ton | Popular Science
English: asteroid 1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
"Paek's strategy is fairly simple: Five tons of paintballs full of white powder would be launched towards an asteroid from a nearby space craft, 20 years in advance of a possible collision with Earth. The force of the pellets hitting the object will push it off course, but also the reflectivity--the albedo--of the white paint would increase, and over time the photons bouncing off the surface would also force the asteroid away from our planet. How has no one ever thought of this before?"
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