• [Dailystar Icon]
• News
• Weird News
• Asteroids

Jeff Bezos building space shield to save Earth from city-killer rocks keeping NASA up at night

The billionaire's Blue Origin firm is joining NASA to launch 'Blue Ring' - a high-tech shield designed to deflect city-killer asteroids and save Earth from a space disaster

[Picture shows a visualisation of an asteroid heading towards Earth]

Jeff Bezos is stepping up to save humanity from city-killer asteroids

Billionaire Jeff Bezos is stepping in to save humanity from city-killer space rocks that experts fear could wipe us out. The Amazon founder's space firm, Blue Origin, has joined forces with NASA to launch a high-tech "Blue Ring" shield designed to intercept and deflect asteroids before they can reach our atmosphere.

While NASA currently keeps a watchful eye on roughly 40,000 near-earth objects (NEOs), there is a terrifying gap in our planetary scouts.

The agency can only track about 60 per cent of the smaller rocks - objects roughly 200ft wide that pack enough punch to level an entire city.

[An artist impression of Nasa's Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART]

An artist's impression of Nasa's Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART(Image: PA)

The threat is so pressing that NASA's planetary defence officer, Dr Kelly Fast, admitted the stealthy asteroids are what keep him "up at night."

However, the NEO Hunter mission - a collaboration between Bezos' team and NASA's jet propulsion laboratory - aims to put those fears to rest.

Scientists are preparing to test a multi-purpose spacecraft capable of staying in orbit to act as a celestial bodyguard.

According to Blue Origin, the system could use several sci-fi-style methods to push asteroids off course, including using high-powered plasma ions to gently nudge a rock away from Earth and the classic method of simply ramming the rock at high speed.

It follows the 2022 DART mission, where NASA successfully smashed a craft into the moonlet Dimorphos at 14,000mph.

While effective, that crash caused the mini-moon to shatter - a risky move if done too close to home.

A report in the Planetary Science Journal warned that shattering a rock near Earth could turn a single "sniper's bullet" into a "shotgun blast" of debris.

With 15,000 asteroids passing uncomfortably close to our planet, the mission is a race against time to avoid following in the footsteps of the dinosaurs.

NASA is also prepping the NEO Surveyor, a specialised space telescope that uses infrared sensors to spot dark asteroids that don't reflect light, instead searching for their "glow in the infrared spectrum as they're heated by sunlight."

Blue Origin is reportedly aiming to launch the NEO Hunter mission later this year, while Elon Musk's SpaceX is scheduled to blast the Surveyor telescope into orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket in 2027.

For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters

[Dailystar Icon]

ENJOYED THIS STORY?

Choose Daily Star as a 'Preferred Source' on Google News for quick access to the news you value.