Blue Origin, NASA team up to protect Earth from asteroids
CANADA - 2025/03/07: In this photo illustration, the Blue Origin logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
(SOPA Images/Getty Images)
Blue Origin is collaborating with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology on the Near Earth Objects Hunter mission to protect Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids. The mission aims to integrate defense capabilities into Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft, using cubesats to assess threats and an ion beam emitter to alter asteroid trajectories. If necessary, the spacecraft can use kinetic impact to deflect larger asteroids.
Full Story: Space (3/17)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin wants to defend Earth against dangerous asteroids. Here’s how

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If at first you don’t succeed, crash your spacecraft at full speed.

a satellite with many parts floats in space above Earth.
A rendering of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft platform, equipped with multiple payloads and components. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

Jeff Bezos’ company has partnered with researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology to study how to integrate Earth defense capabilities into its existing Blue Ring spacecraft platform. The concept is called the Near Earth Objects (NEO) Hunter mission, and it relies on multiple technologies to scan, deflect and divert incoming asteroids away from possible impacts with Earth.

It’s the latest application for Blue Ring, Blue Origin’s modular satellite bus built to support up to 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) of mission payloads distributed between as many as 13 different connection ports. Blue Ring is designed to operate anywhere from low Earth and geostationary orbits to cislunar space, Mars and other deep-space destinations.

NEO Hunter will utilize multiple techniques to intercept, assess and, if needed, redirect the trajectories of potentially hazardous asteroids, according to a March 11 Blue Origin post on X.

Across two separate mission phases, NEO Hunter will release a group of cubesats to rendezvous with and characterize a potential space object threat. Understanding as much as possible about an object’s composition, mass and density can inform which strategies can most successfully be deployed to ensure an altered trajectory.

One of those strategies can be carried out using NEO Hunter’s powerful ion beam emitter. The spacecraft will be capable of shooting a ray of charged particles onto an asteroid to change its orbit. Ion drive engines expel charged particles to propel a spacecraft, like the one used on NASA’s DART probe. Similarly, an ion beam can direct a concentrated stream of charged atoms with enough force to theoretically alter the heading of an object in space.

a satellite with many parts floats in space above Earth.

A rendering of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft platform, equipped with multiple payloads and components.  (Image credit: Blue Origin)

If an asteroid is too big, or moving too fast, to be effectively influenced by NEO Hunter’s ion beam, the spacecraft can enter a second mission phase called “Robust Kinetic Disruption.”