from Tom Leonard

believe it’s a question of when, not if, the earth next has to deal with one.

As we have seen, Hollywood cottoned on long ago to the fact that asteroids were worthy of disaster movie treatment. Inevitably, the methods they dream up to avert impending world destruction have been rather more dramatic than the DART.

In the 1998 film Armageddon, a team of tough, deep-sea oil drillers led by Bruce Willis, are sent up into space to deal with an asteroid the size of Texas that is due to hit earth — wiping out all life — in 18 days.

An advanced version of the Space Shuttle lands them on the rock where they detonate a nuclear bomb, splitting the asteroid in two halves that both fly safely past the planet.

The plot’s not entirely ludicrous — nasa has in fact been training astronauts in how they might actually land and walk on an asteroid, recreating the almost zero-gravity conditions on the seabed off the coast of Florida.

Possible scenarios that have been mooted for an asteroid-landing could include a mission to collect rock samples — asteroids are known to sometimes contain rare elements — or to install rocket engines on its surface that could then be fired up to alter its trajectory.

But as for blowing up an asteroid, scientists believe that even if it were possible (and after eons being battered around in space, they are