NASA’s DART mission will try to deflect an asteroid by flying into it

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) ngo is scheduled to motorboat connected 24 November and volition smash into the asteroid Dimorphos

Space 23 November 2021

By Leah Crane

Illustration of the DART spacecraft and LICIACube

NASA/Johns Hopkins, APL/Steve Gribben

NASA is getting acceptable to punch an asteroid. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) ngo is scheduled to motorboat aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket connected 24 November to smash into the asteroid Dimorphos successful an effort to larn much astir how we mightiness support Earth from an incoming abstraction rock.

Dimorphos is simply a satellite of the asteroid Didymos, earning it the nickname Didymoon. It is astir 160 metres crossed and the brace orbit the prima astir erstwhile each 12 hours. DART is expected to scope the system, 11 cardinal kilometres distant from Earth, and smash into Dimorphos connected 2 October 2022.

DART’s lone technological instruments are the cameras that volition let it to navigate to Dimorphos, a hard feat fixed the abstraction rock’s distance, tiny size and the information that it orbits Didymos erstwhile each 11 hours and 55 minutes. The trade has a wide of astir 500 grams and its sole purpose is to crash into the asteroid astatine a velocity of 6.6 kilometres per second.

However, it volition transportation with it another, smaller spacecraft called the Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), which volition abstracted from DART 10 days earlier impact. It is equipped with 2 cameras to papers the brushwood and however the interaction affects Dimorphos. The European Space Agency is besides readying a ngo called Hera to motorboat successful 2024 and analyse the aftermath.

This is simply a trial tally for a imaginable script successful which an asteroid is heading towards Earth, carried retired connected an asteroid that poses nary imminent information to us. “What we are trying to larn is however to deflect a menace that would travel in,” said NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen successful a property league connected 22 November. “Rest assured, that stone close present is not a menace and it volition not beryllium a menace after.”

The extremity of the clang is to alteration Didymoon’s orbit astir Didymos, making it shorter by astir 10 minutes. This would show that asteroid trajectories tin beryllium changed simply by smashing thing into them.

“It doesn’t instrumentality a lot, but erstwhile we’re looking astatine what [it would take] to deflect an asteroid distant from the Earth, fixed capable clip you tin bash large things with tiny vehicles,” said Ed Reynolds, DART task manager astatine Johns Hopkins University successful Maryland, during the property conference.

While determination are nary known asteroids posing a important menace to Earth anytime soon, it is estimated that lone astir 40 percent of the near-Earth asteroids much than 140 metres crossed person been recovered truthful far. There are respective imaginable ways to deflect perchance unsafe asteroids, and DART volition assistance america make a program should 1 beryllium found.

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• asteroids
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