NASA Developing Asteroid Interceptor to Fend off Armageddon

On Friday Wired News profiled a "lonely" former astronaut, Rusty Schweickart, who is leading a campaign to protect the earth from the possibility of an asteroid crashing into Earth and killing millions of people.

Turns out he wasn't so lonely. While we said in the Q&A that NASA was doing little to protect us from an asteroid crash, it turns out the agency's been working on an anti-asteroid nuclear missile.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has designed a nuclear-warhead-carrying spacecraft, to be launched by the US agency's proposed 's Ares V cargo launch vehicle, to deflect an asteroid that could threaten all life on Earth.

The 8.9m (29ft)-long "Cradle" spacecraft would carry six 1,500kg
(3,300lb) missile-like interceptor vehicles that would carry one 1.2MT
B83 nuclear warhead each, with a total mass of 11,035kg.

NASA says that by the 2020s, the interceptor will be able to detect a dangerous asteroid 5 years in advance, and detect deflect it two years in advance.

NASA Plans Armageddon Spacecraft to Blast Asteroid [Flight]