Meteorite fall in Chelyabinsk!

[imatfaal]

Paint one side white and the other side black - by the time it comes around next time the orbit will have shifted enough due to radiation pressure (if it isn't tumbling - if so stabilise it). This was apparently the chosen answer when the question was looked at a far while ago - blowing it up could lead to shotgun effect for smaller bodies and would not work for larger.

 

I suppose the more modern version would be some form of longterm drive getting power through solar sail

[SciFiReal]

Easiest and quickest is the direct approach, smacking it with as much mass as we can or exploding a nuke near enough to cause massive outgassing, if it is not too large. Those methods are quick and dirty last resorts, no telling what direction they will take assuming it is probably rotating. It would be nice to know if it is solid metal, rock, or a rubble pile. If it is several miles across and far enough away, I propose a Bruce Willis, dig into the center and blow it up to scatter the pieces as far apart as possible. Gravity tractors are among the indirect methods, best but they take a long time to work.

 

We will probably not see a Tunguska sized object until it is too late, but probably it will not destroy a major city.

I am not an expert in calculations, but shouldn't a nuke that can split a huge asteroid be of tremendous size? And how about the several remaining chunks that will still be relatively big?

[Airbrush]

I am not an expert in calculations, but shouldn't a nuke that can split a huge asteroid be of tremendous size? And how about the several remaining chunks that will still be relatively big?

 

In theory, if you can blow the huge asteroid apart, the pieces will fly away from the center of explosion far enough to miss the Earth. This needs to be done far enough away to allow the pieces to spread out thousands of miles apart.