Blue Origin has announced an ambitious plan to safeguard our planet against threatening asteroids. The mission, named NEO Hunter, has been designed in conjunction with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA and Caltech. The mission will use Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft to execute two different phases, which will identify, assess and redirect dangerous Near Earth Objects. The mission marks a significant advancement because it shows how private companies can participate in defending Earth from space threats.
Scouting the Threat
According to NASA, the first phase of NEO Hunter begins with reconnaissance activities. The spacecraft deploys its fleet of CubeSats, which will travel to an asteroid for research purposes to gather information about its composition, mass and density, which will determine the most effective deflection strategy. The NEO Hunter system establishes its position after identifying the asteroid, then activates its ion beam, which produces a continuous flow of charged particles toward the asteroid. The contactless method enables the asteroid to move to a safer orbital path through gradual orbital shifts, which occur without any physical contact.
Smashing It as a Last Resort
However, if the ion beam is not enough, e.g., because the asteroid is too large or travelling too quickly to be redirected gradually, then NEO Hunter has a second, more powerful mode called Robust Kinetic Disruption. Weighing nearly nine times as much as NASA’s DART mission spacecraft, which famously deflected the orbit of asteroid Dimorphos in 2022, NEO Hunter could collide with an asteroid travelling at speeds up to 22,600 mph (36,370 km/h), imparting 1.5 times as much kinetic energy as DART. Before impact, a small satellite called the “Slamcam” would photograph the collision and confirm mission success in real-time, effectively turning a general-purpose commercial satellite into a true shield.
