Deflecting asteroids like Bennu may require 'multiple bumps'

Deflecting an asteroid such as Bennu, which has a small chance of hitting Earth in about a century and a half, could require multiple small impacts from some sort of massive human-made deflection device, according to experts. Although there is a slight chance Bennu will smash into Earth over the next three centuries, NASA notes there is more than a 99.9 percent probability it will not Scientists have been seriously considering how to stop an asteroid from ever hitting Earth since the 1960s, but previous approaches have generally involved theories on how to blow the cosmic object into thousands of pieces. The NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range is a facility that allows experts to investigate potential meteor or asteroid impacts on a planet or moon surface, as well as other research areas AVGR, pictured, was designed to conduct scientific studies of lunar impact processes in support of the Apollo missions The team used 32 meteorites – which are fragments of asteroids that have fallen to Earth from space – that were mostly purchased from private dealers. 'Although the chances of it hitting Earth are very low, Bennu remains one of the two most hazardous known asteroids in our solar system, along with another asteroid called 1950 DA,' NASA said in a statement. The statement was share by NASA on Wednesday and stems from data collected by the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft that is brining samples of the asteroid back to Earth Next year, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission will test KID technologies on a real asteroid in the solar system, called Didymoon.