DART’s impact against Dimorphos is scheduled to occur between September 26 and October 1, 2022.
The movie plot came true NASA launched a mission Tuesday night to deliberately crash a spacecraft into an asteroid, a rehearsal in case humanity needs one day to 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.
Broadcast live on NASA television, the aircraft lifted off at 10:21 p.m. local time on Tuesday (0621 GMT) aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
How will you deal with this potential threat? Scientists say that 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 for Dimorphos to make a complete revolution around his older brother.
Ten points to understand NASA’s mission
1. Objective: Dimorphos, a “moon” about 160 meters (two statues of freedom) wide, that surrounds a much larger asteroid called Didymos (780 meters in diameter). Together, they form a system that orbits the Sun.
“Asteroid Dimorphos, we’re coming for you!” NASA tweeted after launch. He later indicated that the DART had successfully separated from the second part of the rocket.
2. Long journey: “We have received our first signals from #DARTMission, which will continue to deploy its solar panels in the coming hours and prepare for its 10-month round trip to the asteroid,” the space agency added.
3. October 2022: The impact should occur in the autumn of 2022, when the pair of rocks meet 11 million kilometers from Earth, the closest point they can get to.
4. Millionaire cost: “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.
5. Dangerous ?: There are 10,000 known near-Earth asteroids with a size of 140 meters or more, but none have a significant chance of impacting in the next 100 years. However, it is estimated that only 40% of these asteroids have been found to date.
To be clear: asteroids pose no threat to our planet. But they belong to a class of bodies known as Near Earth Objects (NEOs): 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 in size, as they have the potential to devastate cities or entire regions with energy several times that of nuclear bombs. normal.
6. Light impact: The DART (dart) probe will crash into Dimorphos at just over 15,000 miles per hour, causing a small change in the asteroid’s motion.
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.
7. Impact date: 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.
8. Displacement: Didymos’s trajectory could also be slightly affected, but it would not significantly alter its course or endanger Earth, according to scientists.
“Every time we go to an asteroid, we come across things we didn’t expect,” Rivkin said.
9. The DART spacecraft: It is a box with the volume of a large refrigerator and solar panels the size of a limousine on each side, it also contains sophisticated navigation and imaging instruments, including the CubeSat of the Italian Space Agency, which will observe the crash and its effects. later.
10. Suicidal mission: Built by the Johns Hopkins University Physics Laboratory, the spacecraft is the size of a car and will try to deflect the small asteroid Dimorphos by slamming into it. Dimorphos is the smallest of a binary asteroid system called Didymos. Obviously, DART will not survive the impact, but that is also part of the plan. (I)
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