According to a top Russian rocket researcher, Russia is looking forward to modify some of its intercontinental ballistic missiles for destroying asteroids before they smash into our planet.

Last week during an interview with the government-owned TASS news agency, Sabit Saitgarayev of Russia's Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau disclosed information regarding the effort.

The United States has been working on ways to avoid asteroids hit Earth. However, it is following a quite different approach. NASA isn’t planning to blow up the space rocks and instead, it is looking forward to shove them away from the planet.

This is the latest frontier in initiative by both nations to deal with a threat to Earth, dating back to around the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The Russian missiles would be targeting tinnier asteroids measuring 20 meters to 50 meters in diameter. The smaller asteroids can cause major damage and at times, can be spotted just by observatories some hours before their arrival on Earth.

A 20-meter-wide meteor exploded in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013, with the estimated force of 300,000 tons of TNT or more. It resulted into shattering glass in buildings and left over 1,000 people injured. None of the planet’s space agencies were able to detect it coming.

Jason Kessler, the director of NASA's effort to find all asteroid threats to humans, noted, “Unfortunately, we only know about roughly 1% of those asteroids that get down to the 30-meter size, so there's a tremendous amount out there that we have yet to discover”.

Huge asteroids can lead to much more damage, but space observatories can spot them with the help of advanced telescopes and infrared technology.