A super-huge asteroid has been discovered aiming at Earth. It being huge, the de

Question

A super-huge asteroid has been discovered aiming at Earth. It being huge, the detection happened early, and there are about twenty years to do something. One of the proposals, which competes with building of a super-sized nuclear missile, is to pour all the Earth's resources into the following project. It has been computed by astronomers that, to avoid the collision, it would suffice to change the Earth's orbital velocity by 1 cm/s (at the right point on its orbit and in the right direction) The idea is to achieve this by providing a correctly oriented brief "push" to the Earth. The proposal under consideration is to produce sufficiently large number of the rocket engines used on Saturn V (say, F-1 engine), collect them at the right place on the globe, point all of them up and fire them for a short time. The following data is available time to burn the engines cannot be more than 23 days (2.10° s) each F-1 engine has thrust of 6.4-10° N; the exhaust velocity of the F-1 engine is 2.6-10 m/s; the mass of the Earth is 6-10-* kg; the change in the Earth's velocity to be produced is 1 cm/s = 10-2 m/s. 24 Note. It is intended to place the engines at the South pole so that the direction in which they are pointing is not affected by the Earth's rotation Find the number of F-1 engines predicted by the formula (2 points). Express your concerns about the prediction (5 points). Predict the extra speed eventually acquired by the Earth (3 points)

Explanation / Answer

Answer :

Using the basic distance = velocity / time formula, the velocity we would need to impart on the asteroid is:

6000000m / (365 * 86400s) = 0.2m/s

Now according to NASA, 17155 NEOs have been discovered. Now the commonly used density of asteroids is 2g/cm3  ,that is between the density of ice and rock. So we take the mass to be 10x1011.

Therefore, the momentum needed to apart is : 10x1011 x 0.2 m/s = 2 x 1011 kg-m/s

It is predictable from the proposal that about 17 fully-fueled Saturn V rockets will be sufficient to deflect the rock. Getting those 17 Saturn V rocketsinstalled would require THOUSANDS of F-I engines.

Here the proposal, plans to impact with a SUPER-SIZED nuclear missile. Before crashing into an asteroid, at first mapping its surface and collecting data on its mass and overall structure should have been planned.

Now as the impactor would continue the first hit to asteroid the monitor would collect data for investigation purpose. These information may provide future data regarding physics of deflecting asteroids in space.

Also there is a little risk of asteroid's new path that may cause a collision with other asteroids which will potentially start off a chain reaction that could create problem for Earth.

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