Space Shotgun

In a move that would help space scientists understand the mysteries of Mars, American Space Agency NASA has teamed up with a Brooklyn based company Honeybee Robotics to create the first ever space shotgun that will be able to blast off asteroids into small pieces. The gun is being developed as part of NASA’s asteroid redirect mission (ARM).

ARM aims to chip off a massive chunk of an asteroid and shift it to the moon’s orbit from where the asteroid samples can be collected with the help of a robotic spacecraft. The gun can measure the strength of the space rock and it works by dislodging chunks of asteroids out of its orbit to bring them closer to moon.

The proposed technology is still in conceptual phase while NASA plans to launch ARM in early 2020s. Honeybee Robotics terms this process as a key to sending humans to Mars.