How to Kill an Asteroid
The Real Science of Planetary Defense
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the 2025 NASW Science in Society Journalism Award
One of Smithsonian Magazine's Ten Best Science Books of 2024
A Science News Favorite Book of 2024
A gripping account of the "city-killer" asteroids that could threaten Earth and the race to build a planetary defense system.
There are approximately 25,000 “city killer” asteroids in near-Earth orbit—and most are yet to be found. Small enough to evade detection, they are capable of large-scale destruction, and represent our greatest cosmic threat. But in September 2022, against all odds, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a carefully selected city killer, altering the asteroid’s orbit and proving that we stand a chance against them.
In How to Kill an Asteroid, award-winning science journalist Robin George Andrews—who was at DART mission control when it happened—reveals the development of the technology that made it possible, from spotting elusive asteroids and comets to figuring out their geologic defenses and orchestrating a deflection campaign. In a propulsive narrative that reads like a sci-fi thriller, Andrews tells the story of the planetary defense movement, and introduces the international team of scientists and engineers now working to protect Earth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Andrews (Super Volcanoes) serves up a rollicking study of scientific efforts to prevent asteroids from striking Earth. The narrative chronicles the development and successful execution of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, a mission that changed the orbit of the small asteroid Dimorphos by crashing a van-size spacecraft into it in 2022. Andrews describes the technical wizardry that went into making the spacecraft (it would travel too far from Earth to pilot manually, so it was outfitted with an automated guidance system adapted from ballistic missiles) and offers a tense firsthand account of what it was like inside Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, which partnered with NASA on the mission, during the countdown to impact ("Some people were rigid as stone; others vacillated as if affected by an earthquake"). Discussions of what Hollywood gets wrong about doomsday scenarios amuse, as when Andrews explains that using an uncrewed spacecraft to deliver nukes for detonation on an asteroid's surface would have made more sense than the manned drilling missions in Armageddon and Deep Impact. Andrews's sharp eye for detail captures the expertise and eccentricity of scientists involved in the DART mission, such as when he notes that the larger asteroid Dimorphos orbited was sometimes depicted as the Death Star in simulations. It's a surprisingly fun report on averting catastrophe. Photos.
