Blue Origin has unveiled a new mission concept called NEO Hunter, designed to protect Earth from potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs) by employing advanced deflection techniques.
Developed in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Caltech, the concept leverages the company's versatile Blue Ring platform as its foundation.
NEO Hunter adopts a hybrid approach to asteroid deflection. It would first deploy CubeSats to characterize the target asteroid's properties, then position itself nearby to direct a continuous ion beam at the object.
