Bong Wie sent his hands flying, simulating an explosion right there in his Howe Hall office. If his ideas become reality and spacecraft carrying nuclear explosives fly into asteroids one day, “The asteroid can be pulverized – not just fragmented – into dust!” he said, his hands going wild.
On this River to River segment, Ben Kieffer talks with Professor Bong Wei about the threat of asteroids and how researchers at Iowa State University are working to develop technologies to prevent asteroids from colliding with Earth. Wei recently helped conduct a three-year study on the feasibility of rapidly intercepting and nuking an incoming asteroid.
The worst-case scenario might be if we discovered an asteroid only a couple of weeks away from slamming into us. Brent Barbee, a flight dynamics engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, believes he has the answer: an interplanetary ballistic missile. Barbee and Bong Wie, the founding director of the Asteroid Deflection Research Center and …Continue reading “Helpful tips for nuking an asteroid”
On Feb. 15, 2013, an asteroid exploded over Russia that was believed to be 19 meters in diameter. The asteroid struck the city of Chelyabinsk and injured more than 1,000 people, according to bbc.com. The Chelyabinsk asteroid caused panic around the world. It sparked a serious international interest in developing a plan for what to …Continue reading “Researchers study distances from Earth, the use of nuclear weapons to destroy anticipated asteroids”
A plan by an Iowa State University professor to save the planet from a meteor collision continues to streak toward reality. The problem being puzzled over at the Asteroid Deflection Research Center in Ames would devastate humanity: an asteroid hurtling toward the planet, detected too late to be able to use other means to knock …Continue reading “Anti-asteroid nuke gains steam”
Bong Wie has heard the snickers. You want to protect the Earth from asteroids? Where were you when the dinosaurs needed you? You want to be like Bruce Willis in that asteroid movie? Wie has a serious reply: After five years of science and engineering work, Wie and his small team have a publication list …Continue reading “Iowa State engineers developing ideas, technologies to save the Earth from asteroids”
The research of Bong Wie, the Vance D. Coffman Chair Professor in Aerospace Engineering and Asteroid Deflection Research Center (ADRC) director, will be featured on a segment of Science Center of Iowa’s Café Scientifique. The program will be first aired on IPTV World on Monday June 11, 2012, at 8 p.m. CST, with several rebroadcast …Continue reading “CoE professor will be featured on IPTV”
