Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Next Recent concerns that the risk of a dangerous Asteroid impact may have been underestimatedNASA seems to be pushing ahead with plans to develop the ability to deflect rocks in space.
NASA’s DART MISSION STARTS TO SEE IT MAY BE AN ASTEROID AND SAVE US FROM ARMAGEDDON
Nasa successfully carried out the Dart mission, which aimed to crash into a small planet and see if it can save us from destruction.
The robotic spacecraft launched as planned on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 10:20 p.m. Pacific local time from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
The Dart mission will test Nasa’s ability to alter an asteroid’s orbit with kinetic force – crashing a robotic spacecraft into it at high speed and impacting the space rock just enough to hold keep our planet unharmed.
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Dart’s target is a football stadium-sized “lunar” asteroid orbiting a much larger rock – about five times larger – in a binary asteroid system called Didymos. , from the Greek word for twin.
The moon, known as Dimorphos, is one of the smallest astronomical objects to be permanently named. But with a diameter of 525 feet (160 km), its size is typical among known asteroids – the rubble-like remnant left over from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. .
The scientists chose the Didymos system because its relative proximity to Earth and the two asteroid configuration make it ideal for observing the outcome of the collision.
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I’m glad someone finally took this issue seriously. Factors that affect the city or worse are extremely unlikely on human time scales, even if scientists are still discussing exactly where to put the decimal point. But it’s certainly not without risk – it’s worth a few million to ensure we have the capacity to respond to such a threat should it arise.
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