NASA To Develop First Ever Space Shotgun To Blast Asteroids

As the part of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), American space agency NASA and Honeybee Robotics will work together to develop first ever space shotgun to blast asteroids.The space project can blast asteroids into small pieces for collection as samples when a robotic spacecraft reaches near one such space rock in the near future.
NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) aims to chop off a massive chunk of an asteroid and shift it into the Moon’s orbit. Then, a manned spacecraft will collect samples and send these back to the Earth for further examination.The gun can measure the strength of the space rock. Firing a bullet at a boulder’s surface will enable physicists to work out the solidity of the rock by measuring its rebound speed.
http://techlog360.com/2015/09/nasa-to-develop-first-ever-space-shotgun-to-blast-asteroids/