Avoiding an Asteroid

At 12:26 p.m. on June 19, 1968 the asteroid Icarus, which is nearly a mile in diameter, will crash into the mid-Atlantic, 2,000 miles east of Florida. Its impact -- the equivalent of a 500,000-megaton bomb blast -- will splash out some 1,000 cubic miles of sea water and form a crater 15 miles across in the ocean floor. Tidal waves 100 ft. high will sweep across coastal cities on both sides of the ocean, and earthquakes 100 times worse than any ever recorded will be felt all over the world. Clearly, Icarus must be stopped. No expense will be spared, and the only limitation is time. The program must use existent space technology and hardware, and it must succeed.

This chilling pronouncement was delivered by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Paul Sandorff, who presented it last winter as a hypothetical problem to be solved by his class in advanced systems engineering.

After 15 weeks of frantic planning, Sandorff's 21 senior and graduate engineering students worked out a complex scheme that they--and their instructor --believe would save the world from collision with an onrushing asteroid.

Collision Course. Icarus itself is quite real. Unlike most asteroids, which circle the sun in planetlike orbits between Mars and Jupiter, Icarus has a highly elliptical orbit. Like its mythological namesake, it swoops closer to the sun (only 17 million miles away) than any other planetary body of the solar system, and recedes as far away as 183 million miles, beyond the orbit of Mars. In its journey, it moves close to the earth's orbital path every 13 months and narrowly--by astronomical standards--misses the earth once every 19 years. Astronomers have charted its current orbit precisely, and predict that it will pass within 4,000,000 miles of the earth in June 1968. But they also know that the gravitational pull of the earth and other planets will gradually change the asteroid's orbit and could some day place it on a collision course with the earth.

Assuming that such a disaster was nearly upon them, the M.I.T. students organized themselves into seven specialized groups to study the trajectories necessary to intercept Icarus, the space hardware and communications equipment that was available or could be quickly produced, and the effects of nuclear explosions. They consulted with leading physicists, used M.I.T. computers, and determined whether Cape Kennedy's launch-pad capacity could be expanded in time. The groups then coordinated their findings and, using systems engineering, devised a master plan to meet the threat of Icarus.

100 Ft. Away. To save the earth, they decided, it would be necessary to launch a salvo of hydrogen bombs into the asteroid's path. To loft the warheads, the U.S. could rush to completion five Saturn 5 Apollo rockets now under construction and build four more from scratch. A second Saturn launch pad now under construction at Cape Kennedy should be completed, and a third could be built. The Atomic Energy Commission would be requested to assemble six 100-megaton H-bomb warheads, the minimum size necessary to attack Icarus effectively.

On April 7, 1968, after three shots to test the performance of the bomb-carrying spacecraft, crews would launch the first vehicle toward Icarus, still 100 million miles away. Guided by radar signals bounced off the asteroid from earth and picked up by on-board receivers, the warhead would approach the asteroid on June 6, pass to one side, and explode only 100 ft. away. If all went well, the blast would deflect Icarus enough to make it miss the earth or would perhaps disintegrate it.

Should the first shot miss its mark or otherwise fail, the five remaining missiles, launched two weeks apart, would provide insurance. If an early shot broke the asteroid into pieces still large enough to menace the earth, for example, later vehicles could be used to pulverize them. The final shot, if needed, would be launched on June 14 and would intercept Icarus just 1,200,000 miles away, barely 18 hours before its rendezvous with the earth.

Sandorff, whose students in past semesters have devised ingenious space rescue vehicles (TIME, March 10), manned space probes and satellites, designed his course to give M.I.T. students experience in meeting overall problems in systems engineering. The Icarus solution, he believes, is entirely practical, and would have a better than 90% chance of success.

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