Origin articleStored source

Chinese rocket scientists find ‘most effective’ way to nuke a doomsday asteroid

China’s two-pronged method could blast apart an Earth-threatening space rock using a 3-megaton explosion equivalent to 200 Hiroshima bombs.

South China Morning Post World By Ling Xin Aug 2, 2026, 2:00 PM Captured Aug 2, 2026, 4:27 PM

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Chinese researchers believe they may have found the most effective way to destroy or deflect a large, Earth-threatening asteroid – by burying a nuclear bomb beneath its surface and exploding it.

The idea is to first slam a metal penetrator into the asteroid, digging a deep hole.

A second spacecraft would then drop a nuclear bomb into the hole and blow it up, according to a team led by researchers at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology in Beijing.

In simulations, a 3-megaton explosion – or around 200 Hiroshima bombs – could completely blast apart an asteroid about 100 metres (328 feet) across, the team reported in the Space: Science & Technology journal in May.

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Framing report

Origin wording grade

A 0/100 risk

No high-confidence reader-steering cues were detected in the captured source wording.

Report confidence: 76%
Content format: straight news
Evidence findings: 0
Sentences checked: 9
Method: origin-framing-v2

Outlet context is separate unknown (0, 60% confidence). This profile does not change the article grade.

Evidence behind the grade

No scored cues met the evidence and confidence thresholds.

Useful context, not penalties

Attributed claims 2
Attribution helps readers distinguish a source's claim from the article narrator's own assertion.

A second spacecraft would then drop a nuclear bomb into the hole and blow it up, according to a team led by researchers at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology in Beijing.
Uncertainty qualifiers 4
Qualifiers such as may, might, or reportedly are disclosed as technique but do not add framing-risk points by themselves.

China’s two-pronged method could blast apart an Earth-threatening space rock using a 3-megaton explosion equivalent to 200 Hiroshima bombs.
Charged wording in quoted context 1
The wording was preserved as context but excluded from the grade because it appeared in an attributed quote or a legal/allegation context.

The approach – reminiscent of the 1998 disaster film Armageddon but carried out entirely by uncrewed spacecraft – had lower technical complexity and better defence effectiveness than simply slamming a bomb into the asteroid, the researchers argued.

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