NASAs DART spacecraft is due to clash with the smaller sized body of the Didymos binary asteroid system in October 2022. Yes, NASA actually is crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid. NASA and others are actively tracking asteroids, but also we havent discovered all of them. Is NASA crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid?
NASA and others are actively tracking asteroids, but also we havent found all of them yet. It makes sense to do this first test to show if we required to secure the Earth what may we do. And we should do this test before we require it. Thats where DART is available in.
DART is a spacecraft thats about the size of a vending device. And it has actually long solar arrays that protrude. And its going to be traveling actually fast– about 15,000 miles per hour. And its going to slam into this target asteroid thats about the size of the Great Pyramid.
Slamming this smaller spacecraft into this bigger asteroid isnt going to destroy it, but it will deflect it. Its going to give it a small little nudge which will ever so slightly change that asteroids future course.
If you desired to do this, you would desire to do it years in advance such that the asteroid and the Earth werent on a collision course in the future. Is NASA crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid?
By NASA
December 28, 2021
Yes, NASA actually is crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid. That spacecraft is DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test.
NASAs DART spacecraft is due to clash with the smaller sized body of the Didymos binary asteroid system in October 2022. ESAs Hera objective will survey Didymoon post-impact and evaluate how its orbit has been altered by the collision, to turn this one-off experiment into a workable planetary defense technique. Credit: ESA– ScienceOffice.org.
We sure are– all in the name of planetary defense. The DART mission is an innovation test to see if an impactor could change the trajectory of an asteroid. Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory informs us more.
