U.S. government scientists and engineers have drawn up plans for a spacecraft that could knock incoming space rocks off course via blunt-force impact or blow them to bits with a nuclear warhead, BuzzFeed News reported.
To arrive at these results, and refine HAMMER's design, the team modeled how to deal with a potential real-life scenario: What if the 1,640-foot-wide (500 meters) near-Earth asteroid Bennu was headed right for our planet? There's a 1-in-2,700 chance that this will indeed happen, on Sept. 21, 2135, BuzzFeed News reported.