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"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen."
- Larry Niven

Meteorite Deflector  
  A means of pushing aside asteroids that get in the path of your space ship.  

Very early use of this term.

By evening Chick and Flynn were firm friends; they were talking about reaction-motors, meteorite deflectors, three-dimensional sextants, and such things with a fondness that only the two of them felt.
Technovelgy from On Board the Martian Liner, by Miles J. Breuer.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1931
Additional resources -

Another early quote, this one from Murray Leinster's The Ethical Equations (1945):

The blasters are those ravening beams of destruction which take care of recalcitrant meteorites in a spaceship's course when the deflectors can't handle them.

Compare to the deflector shields in George Lucas' Star Wars. Also, compare to the idea of a meteor-spotting radar from George O. Smith's 1943 short story Recoil.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from On Board the Martian Liner
  More Ideas and Technology by Miles J. Breuer
  Tech news articles related to On Board the Martian Liner
  Tech news articles related to works by Miles J. Breuer

Meteorite Deflector-related news articles:
  - NEOShield Asteroid Deflector Project Funded By EU
  - Asteroid Deflection With DART
  - Johns Hopkins Says Asteroid Deflection Will Be Difficult
  - How Can We Block An Asteroid?

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