HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? Ingenious System to Pulverize Asteroids May Be Earth’s Only Chance in a Catastrophe. “Much of the thinking around asteroid impact mitigation is focused on long lead times. If we know months or years ahead of time when an asteroid will impact Earth, we can send out a kinetic impactor to redirect the asteroid. With enough lead time, even a small kinetic impactor can redirect a large asteroid away from us. But what if time is short? What if we find out too late? What if we’ve launched a kinetic impactor, but it missed or failed somehow? That’s where Lubin’s PI idea could come into play.”