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Mind you, the 2019 date is when its' orbit intersects Earth's orbit and we're close at that time. It may or may not hit, but was discovered only a week or three ago. Further observation will tell, in a matter of months, if it's likely to hit, or, more likely, may pass within a few million miles or so. . .

If we find it's likely to hit, THEN we need to send up a mission of some sort ASAP: the earlier we start diverting it, the easier the job will be. You do NOT want to blow it up without changing the orbit: that just changes it from getting hit by a cannonball to getting hit by a shotgun blast, so to speak. Think about the NYC scenes from "Armageddon", on a worldwide basis. . .

It seems like a relatively small change in velocity now might result in a change of orbit large enough to have this totally miss the earth. If we add say 1m/sec of velocity in any direction now that is a net change of about 536,000 km which should be enough. How much of a rocket boost would that require? As I remeber my orbital physics a break-up of the asteroid into small enough pieces would also protect the planet as they would burn up on entering the atmosphere.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

Regarding breaking it up. If it were in smaller pieces, wouldn't the larger surface area of the smaller pieces (relative to one big rock) mean that a whole lot more of the kinetic energy of the entire mass would burn off in the atmosphere?

Plus, assuming NASA determines a high probability of a hit by a single big object, wouldn't blowing the object into pieces tend to spread the object out, making it likely that many of the pieces would miss Earth--that is, only the pieces in the center of the swarm (assuming the initial rock is dead on and assuming the orbit of the entire swarm is not changed) would hit. That rock is going to go a long way in 17 years and the swarm would have a long time to spread out.

Since you seem to know whereof you speak, one more question. Would our largest nuclear bombs have enough energy to nudge the rock enough or to break it into pieces? A lot of a nuclear explosion in space is just going to disappate in the wrong direction. In fact, since the nuclear weapon would not actually throw a subsantial amount of mass at the object, how would energy transfer to the object. Of course it would throw a lot of subatomic particles at the asteroid; but how much energy could be transmitted in that manner.

Sorry about the barrage of questions. This could be a very serious matter and I am curious.