Another nuclear option would be to detonate the nuclear weapon further away from the asteroid with the idea that the explosion would damage the surface of the rock and knock it off course.
Dr Andrews said: "As DART smashed into the asteroid, lots of debris flew back off the asteroid, acting like a rocket jet and giving it more of a push.".
Mathematicians have calculated that crashing a "sacrificial" spacecraft into the side of a speeding asteroid less than one kilometre across - like 2024 YRA - would be powerful enough to divert it.
While the idea of sending a nuclear weapon into space to stop a potentially deadly asteroid sounds like fiction thanks to movies like Armageddon, it is one of the options available to scientists.
In fact, he warned that the technique used two years ago in NASA's DART mission could be like "turning a cannonball into a shotgun spray", increasing the possible devastation on Earth.
