While NASA claims Apophis has a very low risk of hitting the Earth in 2036 (around 1 in 233,000), Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, believes the asteroid has a high impact probability. He described an impact of Aphophis would result in unimaginable loss of life, catastrophic climate change and the creation of a new desert roughly the size of France.
"We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done" to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio.Perminov assured the project will not use nuclear explosions, the idea is to create a new space apparatus designed solely for the purpose of diverting a killer asteroid. A couple of strategies that may be used to deflect the course of an asteroid are discussed at Wikipedia.
"We are talking about people's lives," Perminov was quoted by news agencies as telling the radio station.
"Better to spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people are killed," he said.
Source: AFP