The Roscosmos leadership will soon discuss a project to prevent a large asteroid from falling to Earth that will approach our planet in the 2030s, the head of the space agency, Anatoly Perminov, said on the air of the Voice of Russia radio station. Speaking about future Russian space projects, the head of the agency named the fight against asteroids among them.

"One scientist recently reported to me an interesting thing, that the trajectory of its (the asteroid's) flight is constantly approaching the Earth. It is much larger, almost three times larger than the Tunguska meteorite. He calculated that somewhere in the 2030s it will definitely crash into the Earth," Perminov said. He explained that he was talking about the asteroid Apophis, but did not name the scientist who made the calculations.

Apophis, an asteroid 2004 MN4 with a diameter of 350 meters, is currently considered the greatest cosmic threat to Earth. In 2029, it will pass our planet at about 30 thousand kilometers - closer than the orbit of geostationary satellites. At the same time, Apophis can change its orbit so that during its next approach to Earth in 2036, it will collide with it, which will lead to the transformation of an area roughly equal to France into a desert.

"We will soon hold a closed meeting of our board, the scientific and technical council, and see what can be done. The mathematical calculations that he (the scientist) presented show that it is possible to make a special-purpose spacecraft within the established time frame that will allow us to avoid this collision," said the head of Roscosmos.

According to him, there are no plans to destroy the asteroid: "No nuclear explosions, everything will be done by the laws of physics. We will consider it."

Perminov doubts that this will be a purely Russian project; in his opinion, after studying the project, Roscosmos may come up with a proposal that this be an international project with the participation of Europeans, the USA, and China.

"We are talking about people's lives. It is better to pay several hundred million dollars and create a system that will not allow a collision, than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people die," said the head of Roscosmos.

"We are just opening our eyes"

"This is a project of the Space Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and INASAN as the lead organization," Boris Shustov, director of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (INASAN), explained to RIA Novosti, answering the question of which project would be discussed in Roscosmos.

He said that the discussion is included in the plan of events of the scientific and technical council of Roscosmos for 2010, but when this will happen is still unclear.

According to the scientist, at the moment astronomers have no data indicating the inevitability of Apophis' collision with Earth. Moreover, observations have recently been obtained that have significantly reduced the probability of a collision in 2036.

"We are not talking about Apophis exactly, it is just a symbolic object. We are talking about the fact that we know so little about this, there are so many objects that pose a danger. Now we are only opening our eyes and seeing that this problem exists, that we know about no more than 1% of threatening objects," Shustov said.

"The fact that Roscosmos has decided to consider the issue at the NTS is already a good, positive shift," he added.

Asteroid Tractor

A "gravity tractor" could be used to deflect the asteroid, Oleg Malkov, a leading researcher at INASAN, told RIA Novosti.

He explained that such a "tractor" could be a spacecraft that would rotate around the asteroid, gradually shifting its orbit. Another, more fantastic technology is installing engines on the celestial body itself.

In turn, Shustov noted that such methods are good only in cases where a potential threat becomes known years and decades before the collision. Then microscopic movements under the action of the "tractor" can reach significant values.

"But for now we are in the 'scalded cat' mode - it is already flying, it is time to take action - in this case only tough measures, God willing, we will have time to repel them, if this is at all possible, by much more crude, understandable military means. You understand that we are talking about a nuclear or even thermonuclear charge," the scientist said.

Therefore, he noted, it is necessary, first of all, to create a system for warning and assessing threats.

"After all, 'to be afraid' is not just words. If we consider that the threat is great, we need to take action, say: 'to repel', or 'to evacuate entire countries' - these are huge expenses. That is, if we over-vigilance, this is fraught with great losses. If we under-vigilance, this is also dangerous," the agency's interlocutor said.

Only then should we take preventive measures. "We are working in all three areas within the framework of the expert working group of the Russian Academy of Sciences Space Council," Shustov said.

He stressed that all leading space countries take this problem seriously. In particular, in 2009 the EU organized the Space Awareness System program directorate - "Space Threat Warning System", which monitors the dangers associated with the unpredictable behavior of the Sun, space debris and asteroid-comet hazard.

One of the elements of the system will be the orbital infrared observatory WISE, which is better able to see dark asteroids that emit in the infrared range.

Roscosmos is preparing to save Earth from asteroids