It was around 66 million years back that a giant asteroid hit the Earth with full fury, causing chaos all around the planet. The asteroid impact was so huge, as it resulted in the extinction of dinosaurs from the planet's surface.
Several space experts strongly believe that such incidents are not confined to the past, as they may happen in the future too. To protect the Earth from such a chaotic event, most space experts believe that nuking the approaching space body is the only way to prevent a possible devastating scenario.
And now, some space experts have suggested that there could be another effective way to protect the Earth from such an apocalyptic event. According to these experts, the trajectory of the approaching asteroid can be successfully deflected by hitting it with a spacecraft.
It should be also noted that NASA's Dart mission, last year, had crashed a spacecraft into asteroid Dimorphos, indicating the fact that this seemingly cinematic idea could be practical even in real life.
"A spacecraft will be a lot more precise because you can select the mass, the velocity and the direction of the impact – you can really control the deflection," said Ian Carnelli of the European Space Agency.
Earlier, space scientist Natalie Starkey had suggested that a pre-emptive nuclear strike is a perfect way by which planet Earth can be protected.
As per Starkey, a nuclear pre-emptive strike is basically a concept where humans should blow up an asteroid on one of its prior close visits.
"If the object was one that passed Earth frequently, moving ever closer to impact with each orbit, then it could be blown up in a pre-emptive strike on one of its prior close-Earth visits before the one that was predicted to cause total annihilation, nuking it as it was heading away from Earth. In this way, any radioactive fallout from the destruction wouldn't affect life on Earth," said Starkey.
