For larger or closer NEOs, or those requiring a greater degree of deflection, you'd use "kinetic impactors," spacecraft loaded with lead or copper, to ram the target — speeding nails aimed at a speeding hammer.
(If you slow or accelerate an asteroid by just one centimetre per second, and you start ten years before the projected impact, the cumulative divergence will be sufficient). For larger or closer NEOs, or those requiring a greater degree of deflection, you'd use "kinetic impactors," spacecraft loaded with lead or copper, to ram the target speeding nails aimed at a speeding hammer.
You have to rely on the fact that the Impactor is a smart spacecraft as is the Flyby spacecraft.
This approach is based on hypervelocity impact dynamics and takes the shape, material, internal structure and impact location etc. of spacecraft and impactor, which might greatly affect the fragment distribution, into consideration.
The Impactor section of the spacecraft contains an instrument that is optically identical to the MRI, called the Impactor Targeting Sensor (ITS), but without the filter wheel.
For The Record Los Angeles Times Friday July 01, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 80 words Type of Material: Correction NASA project -- An article on NASA's Deep Impact mission in the June 23 Calendar Weekend contained incorrect information about the spacecraft's impactor, which will collide with Comet Tempel 1 on Sunday night.
On that primary mission, the spacecraft released an impactor that crashed into Tempel's nucleus kicking up thousands of tonnes of icy debris.
In the majority of cases, the preferred concept would look much like Nasa's Deep Impact mission of 2005 which saw a shepherding spacecraft release an impactor to strike a comet.
Trajectory designs are shown for reaching comet P/Tempel 1 near perihelion at its 2005 apparition and for the approach and flyby trajectories of the flyby spacecraft, which carries the impactor up to 24 h before impact.
