Planetary securityUkraine tensions hobble U.S.-Russia cooperation on planetary asteroid defense

Published 18 August 2014

Last week the United States said it would freeze a U.S.-Russian nuclear agreement, an agreement which would, among other things, allow Russian scientists into the nuclear complex at Los Alamos National Laboratoryand, in return, grant American scientists access to Russian nuclear facilities. The decision to suspend the agreement was taken in response to Russia’s conduct toward Ukraine. Experts say the decision may damage efforts to defend Earth against a common enemy. The option of using a nuclear weapon to destroy an Erath-threatening asteroid has been gaining in popularity among scientists, but its implementation calls for cooperation with Russia’s space agency.

Last week’s news reported that the United States would freeze a U.S.-Russian nuclear agreement, an agreement which would, among other things, allow Russian scientists into the nuclear complex at Los Alamos National Laboratory and, in return, grant American scientists access to Russian nuclear facilities. The decision to suspend the agreement was taken in response to Russia’s conduct toward Ukraine. Experts say the decision may damage efforts to defend Earth against a common enemy.

NextGovreports that since a meteor struck the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, NASA and the Defense Department have stepped up asteroid defense-planning efforts. Scientists have identified about 90 percent of the 1,100 big, Earth-destroying asteroids, measuring 1,000 yards across or more — but only about a fourth of small asteroids, still capable of causing mass damages, have been discovered.

Researchers have proposed three methods to stop a large asteroid from striking the Earth:

  • The asteroid can be pushed off a collision course with Earth by a laser beam, or by hitting it with a spacecraft
  • An asteroid can be pulled away from its current path by sending a space vehicle big enough to pull the asteroid into the vehicle’s gravitational field
  • Lastly, the asteroid can be hit with a nuclear weapon, which could result in radioactive rocks hitting the Earth.

“In recent years, advocates of the use of nuclear weapons to counter space threats have been gaining ground. NASA is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to study the idea, and the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories are itching to work with the Russians on it,” wrote Douglas Birch of the Center of Public Integrity. Preparation for such a feat calls for cooperation with Russia’s space agency, but the hold on collaboration with U.S. scientists might delay those efforts.

Last year, the United Nations Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space sought to establish an International Asteroid Warning Network to track and share intelligence on asteroids, and launch a Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) to develop strategies for dealing with asteroids. “In the case of a real threat, one that could be acted upon, it would be one or more of the (national) space-faring agencies that would carry out the mission,” wrote Sergio Camacho, chair of the UN Action Team on Near-Earth Objects. “The expectation is that Russia would join SMPAG (all agencies need to formally join SMPAG). If they don’t, they can always join later.”

As the UN sets up its asteroid monitoring and defense committees, the United States and Russia may find it necessary to normalize space and nuclear relations. “Asteroid impacts will always be with us, and relations between states will ebb and flow forever,” wrote Rusty Schweickart, chairman emeritus of the B612 Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to tracking asteroids. Considering the years required to plan an asteroid defense mission, “I suspect that the task of working together to (ensure) a global disaster does not occur will trump ‘minor’ geopolitical (temporary) bad blood,” Schweickart wrote.