This illustration shows the DART spacecraft approaching two asteroids, Didymos and Dimorphos, with a small observing spacecraft nearby.
Image supplier: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben
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Image supplier: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben
This illustration shows the DART spacecraft approaching two asteroids, Didymos and Dimorphos, with a small observing spacecraft nearby.
Image supplier: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben
Nuclear bomb. It’s the answer needed for upcoming space objects like asteroids and comets, as Hollywood fears. Movies like Deep impact and Apocalypse rely on nuclear weapons to save the world and deliver the movie.
But planetary protection experts say, in fact, if astronomers spot a dangerous space rock on the way, the safest and best answer could be something. more sophisticated, such as simply pushing it off course by ramming it with a small spacecraft.
That’s just what NASA is willing to try, with a spacecraft scheduled to crash into an asteroid at 7:14 p.m. Eastern time on Monday.
Impact will be the peak of NASA Double asteroid navigation test (DART), a more than $300 million effort launched a space vehicle in November 2021 to perform humanity’s first test of planetary defense technology.
“This is really about an asteroid deflection, not disruption. This won’t blow up the asteroid.” Nancy Chabothead of DART coordination at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, who said the planned collision was just a nudge similar to “running a golf cart into the Great Pyramid .”
Adjusting the trajectory of a space rock
The target asteroid, called Dimorphos, is about 7 million miles away and poses no threat to Earth. It is about 525 feet across and orbits another, larger asteroid.
NASA officials emphasized that there was no way their test could turn either of these two space rocks into a threat.
“There is no scenario where one or the other bodies could become a threat to Earth,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the science mission directorate at NASA. “It’s not scientifically feasible, just because of conservation of momentum and other things.”
Instead, the impact will slightly shorten the time it takes for Dimorphos to orbit its larger asteroid. Currently, a full circuit takes 11 hours 55 minutes. The impact of DART will change the path of Dimorphos so that it moves closer to the larger asteroid and takes less time to circumnavigate, perhaps once every 11 hours and 45 minutes.
The two asteroids are so far apart that the telescope treats them as a single point of light that dims and brightens as the Dimorphos orbit. Images from the DART spacecraft’s camera will be the first chance scientists have of seeing the asteroid they’re studying to hit.
In fact, the spacecraft’s navigation system would initially target the larger and easier-to-detect asteroid, only turning their attention to Dimorphos during the mission’s final hour.
The space agency will broadcast images from the perished spacecraft in real time on its website. The fuzzy clumps will get bigger and bigger as the spacecraft slams toward it at about 14,000 miles per hour. At the moment of collision, the image will suddenly stop.
But a smaller spacecraft nearby will keep an eye on it and will send images back to Earth in the coming days. Telescopes on all seven continents, as well as space telescopes like James Webb, will also watch the collision and its aftermath for weeks, making observations that will allow astronomers to measure accurately measure how the asteroid’s path has changed.
Furthermore, in the next few years, the European Space Agency will send a mission called Hera created this binary asteroid system, allowing scientists to gather more information about the impact of the collision.
All of this would reveal how an asteroid responds to an intentional thrust, and scientists can take that information to help them devise contingency plans. Ready for future threats.
“The bottom line is, it’s a great thing,” Ed Lu, who serves as executive director of the Asteroid Institute, a program run by a nonprofit dedicated to planetary protection. “Someday we’ll find an asteroid with a high probability of hitting Earth, and we’ll want to deflect it.”
When that happens, “we should first have some experience knowing that this will work,” says Lu.
A lot of asteroids are still not found and tracked
However, those working on the DART mission seem to understand that their project sounds far-fetched.
“We’re moving an asteroid. We’re changing the motion of a natural body in space. Mankind has never done that before.” Tom Statler, NASA DART Program Scientist. “This has been the stuff of sci-fi books and really corny episodes of Star Trek since I was a kid, and now it’s true. do.”
NASA tracks a lot of space rocks, especially larger ones that can cause extinction-level events. Thankfully, there are currently no species that threaten the Earth. But much Dimorphos-sized asteroids have yet to be discovered, and those asteroids have the potential to destroy a city if they fall.
That’s why NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office wants to launch an asteroid-hunting space telescope NEO surveyorcould increase in 2026 or 2028, depending on how much Congress allocates.
“It’s something that we need to do so that we know what’s going on out there, know what’s coming and have enough time to prepare for it.” Lindley JohnsonNASA Planetary Defense Officer.
Such a telescope could give Earthlings years or decades or even centuries, he says, of space rocks on an alarming path – plenty of time to take. come up with a solution, whether it’s a “kinetic effect” like DART or maybe another type of spacecraft that will just fly next to a worrisome asteroid and use gravity to pull it away. lightly.
All of that is very different from the usual way Hollywood portrays saving the planet, Johnson noted.
“They had to make it interesting, you know, we found the asteroid just 18 days before it hit, and people were running around with their hair on the flames,” he said. he said. “That’s not the way to protect the planet.”
