MOSCOW, June 30. /TASS/. The United States and other countries may be developing and testing asteroid weapons under the guise of creating planetary protection systems, honorary member of the Tsiolkovsky Cosmonautics Academy, CEO of the Planetary Protection Center non-profit partnership Anatoly Zaitsev told TASS on Friday.
"It is necessary to point out that an opportunity emerges to test kinetic, laser and even asteroid weapons under the guise of creating tools of protection from dangerous celestial bodies. These weapons can, for example, become a component of the space forces set up by the United States with the aim of its dominance in outer space," the expert said on the occasion of International Asteroid Day annually celebrated on June 30.
There are two methods to use asteroids as weapons, he pointed out.
The first method is to conceal information on a dangerous celestial body and the second option is to deliberately alter the asteroid flight path to make it crash onto Russian territory, the expert explained.
"The first option is potentially plausible, even if hardly probable because we detect less than 0.1% of about 2,500 Earth-approaching asteroids annually discovered in the world. The second scenario is real because over 30 years the United States and other countries have organized 12 expeditions to 14 asteroids and six comets, in which the methods and means of controlling their flight paths were tested," he said.
Russia carries out work in the sphere of planetary protection "on its own initiative and without general coordination," the expert said.
The system of protection from asteroid and comet threats will help Russia protect itself and the entire planet from dangerous celestial bodies, develop the scientific-technical and defense potential, attract international investment and bolster cooperation and trust between peoples, the expert pointed out.
Russia is currently developing systems of monitoring the near-Earth space. In particular, on April 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the federal project of the automated system of warning about dangerous situations in the near-Earth space. The system dubbed Milky Way will embrace 65 ground-based telescopes and the space segment. As Roscosmos Executive Director for Long-Term Programs and Science Alexander Bloshenko earlier told TASS, the system’s space component will comprise a cluster of special-purpose near-Earth space monitoring satellites. The launch of the first satellite is scheduled for 2027.
International Asteroid Day
On June 30, 1908, 115 years ago, an explosion occurred over the Siberian taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River and apparently caused by a celestial body called the Tunguska meteorite. The powerful blast fell trees within a radius of about 40 km. The fragments of the celestial body were not found.
In December 2016, the UN General Assembly made a decision to annually mark the date of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite on June 30 as International Asteroid Day.