> the idea of a "risk corridor" applies to an object in a decaying orbit. It will hit somewhere along the line of orbit It also applies to asteroids, and is a

> the idea of a "risk corridor" applies to an object in a decaying orbit. It will hit somewhere along the line of orbit It also applies to asteroids, and is a standard concept used in these scenarios. See e.g. the materials from the exercise at this year's Planetary Defense Conference [1] (the story on LitHub is basically a variation on that scenario, which also features an asteroid splitting in two during the deflection attempt, a failure to use nukes, and a city destroyed by the impact: New York). > objects that we find which could hit us get within range of our rockets only a finite number of times There are more and less viable launch dates, clustered in launch windows, but the details vary depending on your vehicle and the orbit. JPL's NEO Deflection App [2] has several illustrative examples which you can play with, and which work pretty much as in the story. [1] https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc19/ https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc19/ [2] https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/nda/ https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/nda/