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Recently, the DART mission, which stands for NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, took its initial look at Didymos, a double system that contains its intended destination, Dimorphous. DART purposefully slammed into Demorphos, a moonlet of the asteroid Didymos, on September 26. In spite of the fact that the asteroid offers no danger to Earth, it’s the first time the kinetic collision technique has been used to divert an asteroid in an attempt to protect a planet from harm.
Key Takeaways
- The DART mission, conducted by NASA, essentially crashed the spacecraft onto the asteroids Demorphos and Didymos as the first test of humanity’s planetary defense system.
- Researchers believe the asteroid’s trajectory will alter due to the collision. Yet, NASA estimates it will take a few weeks to determine how much the impact altered the asteroid’s course.
About Planetary Defence
Engineers and scientists at NASA are looking at comets and asteroids and how they affect moons and planets when they hit them. NASA’s Coordination Office of Planetary Defense is looking into ways to keep asteroids from hitting Earth. It also works with many other government entities to devise a strategy to deal with these problems. Among the essential things that happen with the solar system is that things hit each other. Comets, meteoroids & asteroids are all types of rock and ice that hit Earth today. Thus many meteoroids end up as meteors that vaporise up in the atmosphere. Some of these pieces arrive on Earth as meteorites. Rarely do rocks get big enough to hurt people or cities. At the moment, no recognised asteroids are expected to hit our planet. Scientists are looking at the characteristics of asteroids and looking for ones whose trajectories may eventually cross Earth. Radio telescopes such as Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory use radio waves/radar to figure out how far away an asteroid seems from Earth, where it is going, how big it is, and how fast it is it spins. Planetary scientists find craters made by impacts on Earth and perhaps other bodies, as well as meteorites that came from asteroids that were close to Earth and fell to Earth. Planetary missions are attempting to compare the kinds & proportions of asteroids & looking at the damage caused by impacts on asteroids. Impacts can change asteroid structures. A few asteroids are solid through, whereas others are loose piles of rubble. Engineers and scientists can find ways to keep asteroids from hitting Earth in the future if they know how they are made.
Planetary defence research is essential for figuring out how to safeguard our homes from future threats and designing spacecraft operations that will help us do that.
About DART Mission
DART is a test objective to try out a plan for turning an asteroid away. The concept is that if humans can meet these asteroids that are headed toward us when we are far enough away from the planet, a slight change in direction will be sufficient to alter the trajectory of an asteroid. NASA’s DART spacecraft hit the asteroids Dimorphos and Didymos on September 26. Scientists think that the impact will change the path of the asteroid. But it will consider taking NASA some weeks to figure out how significantly the impact changed the path of the asteroid. Scientists will examine the information from DART’s crash and compare it to the data from different computer simulations to see if this kinetic impact test method will still be a good choice if an asteroid does come hurtling toward Earth. Scientists do not know how much Dimorphos weighs, but they think it’s around 5 billion kilograms. About 600 kg is how much the DART spacecraft weighs.
Why did NASA choose Didymos for its DART mission?
The success of the scientific endeavour depends on making the right goal choice. According to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory & NASA collaborating on the project, multiple factors make this binary asteroid system perfect for this expedition.
- As seen from Earth, Dimorphos occults Didymos regularly because their system is an eclipsing binary.
- Since the pair is visible from Earth, telescopes here can track any brightness variations caused by the moonlet’s rotation around the parent asteroid. By observing these fluctuations, it is possible to calculate the period of time required for Demorphos to circle Didymos.
- Members of the mission crew highlighted that the two asteroids chosen for the test pose no danger to Earth. The Didymos group is conveniently located at a distance of around 11 million kilometres from Earth.
NASA’s take on the potential threat from asteroids
Asteroid impacts are possible, even though this specific asteroid posed no danger to Earth & NASA predicts that Earth will be safe from asteroids for at least the next century. Around one million years ago, an asteroid impact is thought to have wiped off the dinosaurs and most life on Earth. In 2013, an asteroid detonated over Russia after entering Earth’s atmosphere, injuring hundreds & causing massive damage. A steady stream of minor asteroids (vast numbers orbit the Sun) continually crashes into Earth’s atmosphere, only to be destroyed by atmospheric friction before ever touching down. Some of them make it to the ground, but they’re too small to do any real damage. Larger asteroid sizes pose a threat. The dinosaur-eradicating one was roughly 10 kilometres wide. According to NASA, an asteroid of such size only makes a close approach to Earth once every 100–200 million years. The issue is that these estimates only account for the 26,000 or so known asteroids. We still don’t know about the vast majority of asteroids out there. Indeed, these may come as a shock to us.
DART’s crash was an exercise in technology demonstration and even a test of our ability to perform such manoeuvres in the future. This material gives science fiction or science fiction movies their enticing qualities. Here we have an asteroid speeding toward Earth, and if it hits, it might destroy all life on the planet. And somehow, right at the last second, people (mainly the US as a nation) pull off a scheme to divert the asteroid’s course and prevent a disaster. For the very first time, NASA made this scenario a reality.
