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1 - Planet Niribu X is a hypothetical planet. Therefore it can't be located in order to send a probe to verify its existence. NASA can only send probes to specific targets, whose location is well known.
2 - Novelists and film directors have widely explored this scenario. While it is possible to send a nuclear warhead (or even a cluster of them) towards an incoming asteroid, scientists do not believe the explosion would be strong enough to alter its course. The most likely scenario would be a partial fragmentation of the asteroid, resulting in hundreds of smaller asteroids bearing down on us besides the main one, which would be worse.
3 - This has happened. On July 1994, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragmented and collided with jupiter. The impact of the fragments resulted in huge fireballs that reached a height of 6000km, so large that the entire Earth could fit into one of these plumes. This was proof that Jupiter can "shield" the other planets by altering the course of incoming ateroids and comets towards it, due to its large mass.
Hope this helped :)
2 - Novelists and film directors have widely explored this scenario. While it is possible to send a nuclear warhead (or even a cluster of them) towards an incoming asteroid, scientists do not believe the explosion would be strong enough to alter its course. The most likely scenario would be a partial fragmentation of the asteroid, resulting in hundreds of smaller asteroids bearing down on us besides the main one, which would be worse.
3 - This has happened. On July 1994, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragmented and collided with jupiter. The impact of the fragments resulted in huge fireballs that reached a height of 6000km, so large that the entire Earth could fit into one of these plumes. This was proof that Jupiter can "shield" the other planets by altering the course of incoming ateroids and comets towards it, due to its large mass.
Hope this helped :)
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1. NASA is funded by the US government, and you don't spend money on that sort of project. If you were a US taxpayer, would you want the government to spend money on a space probe, or on their citizens? Furthermore, a space probe mission takes quite a while to plan and launch, and it might be a little late to launch a mission already.
2. No. Right now we don't have weapons to shoot down meteors or asteroids. The best we can do is to nuke it, but that would fragment the meteor, possibly increasing the destruction if those pieces fell to Earth. Also, there is a treaty banning the use of weapons in space, although I suppose one could petition the signatories of that treaty to lift it just for the sake of destroying an incoming meteor/asteroid.
3. Yes. In fact Jupiter was hit by the fragments of a comet in recent history (in the past decade or so), and Jupiter is still out there.
2. No. Right now we don't have weapons to shoot down meteors or asteroids. The best we can do is to nuke it, but that would fragment the meteor, possibly increasing the destruction if those pieces fell to Earth. Also, there is a treaty banning the use of weapons in space, although I suppose one could petition the signatories of that treaty to lift it just for the sake of destroying an incoming meteor/asteroid.
3. Yes. In fact Jupiter was hit by the fragments of a comet in recent history (in the past decade or so), and Jupiter is still out there.