Catching up yet again with Advances In Space Research for 15 Jan 2026 (vol. 77 #2), a mid-month issue:
Liu, D. Yan, W. Liu, J. et al. Close-proximity imaging and 3D modeling simulation analysis of asteroid 2016HO3 Pg 2637 .2025.12.002
Wu, S. Chi, R. Zhang, H. et al. Effects of impactor length-to-diameter ratio on the dynamic response resulting from kinetic impacts into monolithic asteroid targets Pg 2676 .2025.10.081
The asteroid 2016 HO3 is better known as Kamo’oalewa… and last year became the target of the mission Tianwen-2. The spacecraft is to approach, then sample the small body, for return to Earth in 2027. But before it can do so, it must safely rendezvous with it. This is nontrivial, since at a diameter of dozens of meters, there may be few spots on its surface that have gravel (not dust) for retrieval. Also note that Kamo’oalewa rotates in an hour or less, faster than Ryugu. Very close operations at such a body are not to be dismissed. Hence, Liu et al. What camera info do we need to gauge Kamo’oalewa, what algorithms should we apply to those images, and what navigation about the body does the resulting asteroid model imply? The fact that we’ve done this before is no excuse.
Less subtle: kinetic deflection (“ramming”). For all the newbies who ask “why don’t we just blow up the asteroids?”, we have work ahead of us, and Wu et al. describe some of that work. Nudging a threat slightly so it misses Earth is a far easier task, energetically. But it’s harder, computationally: what amount of nudging will do the job, and how would we know? The relevant parameter is beta (“β“), or dynamic augmentation. When an asteroid is struck, surface grains and boulders are ejected by the blow. This escape of material not only lightens the asteroid, but acts as a weak thruster. Some of the ejecta shoots back towards the direction of the blow, and by the law of action and reaction acts as a bigger impact. We saw this from DART, at Dimorphos. The DART shape was what happened to work out for the program, not some deliberate ramming design. What would a deliberate rammer look like?