Could We Actually Nuke an Asteroid to Save Earth?

Two recent papers anticipate how nukes could be employed to either deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, or blow it into smaller, less hazardous chunks. One, published in Acta Astronautica, proposes a vehicle called the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER), which could be deployed to nudge asteroids away from Earth, or in a worst case scenario, as a delivery mechanism for a nuclear device.

Source: vice.com