HYPERVELOCITY ASTEROID INTERCEPTION AND DISRUPTION FOR PLANETARY DEFENSE

Pulverize It (PI) is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase II study for planetary defense which is intended to operate in both short warning and extended interdiction modes, representing a unique multi-modal approach to threat mitigation. The method utilizes high aspect ratio, high density hypervelocity impactors to penetrate an incoming asteroid. In extended warning scenarios in which the asteroid is far from Earth, PI can be used for either robust disruption via fragmentation or enhanced deflection of the threat. In short-warning scenarios, PI can be used in a terminal mode to disrupt an incoming asteroid into small fragments (<10 m diameter). The fragment cloud would then intercept Earth, resulting in a series of high-altitude airburst events with spatial and temporal spread, yielding ground-level optical pulses and de-correlated shock waves which distribute the energy of the parent asteroid. We utilize a variety of simulation methods to investigate the hypervelocity interception and mitigation of various asteroid models in both extended warning and short warning (terminal) scenarios. Our simulations support the proposition that PI is an effective multi-modal approach for planetary defense, yielding robust asteroid disruption and ground effects which are vastly less damaging in comparison to unmitigated cases.