NASA is working with the US Nuclear Security Administration at the possibility of using nuclear bombs to destroy hazardous asteroids and comets heading towards Earth.
In a new partnership to defend Earth and its populations, the two bodies are looking at how to deflect and/or stop around one million near-Earth asteroids that could threaten cities and, in the case of a very large asteroid, the planet, New York Times reported.
Only a tiny fraction of those asteroids have been detected and can be tracked.
As in the 1998 film Armageddon — where Bruce Willis flies a space shuttle to an oncoming asteroid to drill a warhead into its core — the nuclear payload could be delivered by rocket.
“Often, these agencies focus on their own pieces of the puzzle, so anything that brings them together is a good thing,’ Bruce Betts, director of science and technology at the Planetary Society told the Times.
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