NASA Prepares Spacecraft Launch to Hit Asteroid; it will be a rehearsal if the situation arises

NASA is preparing to launch a mission to deliberately crash a spacecraft into an asteroid, a trial in case humanity needs to one day stop a giant space rock from killing life on Earth.

It may sound like science fiction, but the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is a real experiment that will take off at 10:21 PM Pacific Time on Tuesday (0621 GMT Wednesday), aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base. in California.

“All systems, as well as the weather, look good for the Falcon 9 launch tonight,” Elon Musk’s company tweeted.

NASA readies DART planetary defense mission to deflect asteroid trajectory

Its target is Dimorphos, a “moon” about 160 meters (two statues of freedom) wide, surrounding a much larger asteroid called Didymos (780 meters in diameter). Together, they form a system that orbits the Sun.

The impact should occur in the autumn of 2022, when the pair of rocks are 11 million kilometers from Earth, the closest point they can get to.

“What we’re trying to learn is how to deflect a threat,” NASA chief scientist Thomas Zuburchen said in a press conference call about the $ 330 million project and the first of its kind.

To be clear: asteroids pose no threat to our planet.

But they belong to a class of bodies known as Near Earth Objects (NEOs). These are asteroids and comets that come within 50 million kilometers of our planet.

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office is most interested in bodies larger than 140 meters, since they have the potential to devastate cities or entire regions with energy several times that of bombs. normal nuclear weapons.

NASA’s plans to prevent a supervolcano from destroying humanity

There are 10,000 known near-Earth asteroids with a size of 140 meters or more, but none have a significant chance of impact in the next 100 years. But – an important caveat – it is estimated that only 40% of these asteroids have been found to date.

Planetary scientists can create miniature impacts in laboratories and use the results to create sophisticated models of how to deflect an asteroid. But these models are based on flawed assumptions, so they want to run a real-world test.

The DART (dart) probe, which is a box with the volume of a large refrigerator and solar panels the size of a limousine on each side, will crash into Dimorphos at just over 15,000 miles per hour, causing a small change in the movement of the asteroid.

Scientists say these rocks are an “ideal natural laboratory” for the test, because Earth-based telescopes can easily measure the variation in brightness of the Didymos-Dimorphos system and calculate the time it takes Dimorphos to orbit its older brother.

Its orbit never crosses our planet, providing a safe way to measure the effect of the impact, which is scheduled to occur between September 26 and October 1, 2022.

Andy Rivkin, head of the DART research team, said the current orbital period is 11 hours 55 minutes. The team expects the hit to reduce Dimorphos’ orbit by about 10 minutes.

There is some uncertainty about the amount of energy that will be transferred on impact, as the internal composition and porosity of the small moon is unknown. The more debris generated, the more push Dimorphos will receive.

“Every time we go to an asteroid, we come across things we didn’t expect,” Rivkin said.

The DART spacecraft also contains sophisticated imaging and navigation instruments, including the Italian Space Agency’s CubeSat, which will observe the crash and its after-effects.

Didymos’s trajectory could also be slightly affected, but it would not significantly alter its course or endanger Earth, according to scientists. (I)