The United States may be considering the use of asteroids as weapons, according to Russian experts. The recent DART mission was seen as a practice run for this possibility. The Chinese Foreign Ministry had already warned in 2022 about the militarization of space by the US. Now, Anatoly Zaitsev, the director of the Planetary Protection Center, has also issued a warning. Zaitsev believes that the US is working on a method to hide the existence of potentially dangerous asteroids from enemy states. Furthermore, he claims that the US is developing the ability to change the trajectory of asteroids in space so that they crash into enemy countries.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently altered the trajectory of an asteroid as part of the DART mission. The aim of the mission was to test whether a dangerous asteroid could be diverted from its path. However, Zaitsev believes that the mission was a cover-up for the US to test whether an asteroid could be redirected to bomb Russia or another enemy country. While experts agree that the use of asteroids as weapons is theoretically possible, the risk-benefit ratio is so poor that it is highly unlikely to be used in practice.
The potential use of asteroids as weapons is a concerning development in the ongoing militarization of space. The US has been accused of seeking to dominate space and has been criticized by other countries for its actions. The use of asteroids as weapons would be a significant escalation of this trend and could have catastrophic consequences. It is essential that the international community works together to prevent the weaponization of space and to ensure that space remains a peaceful and cooperative domain for all nations.
