The asteroid that NASA’s DART spacecraft will crash into is right where scientists expected. It will be quite an event (and there are already many, fortunately, this year), as it will be the first ‘planetary defense’ spacecraft sent to deflect an asteroid.
It’s a harmless asteroid
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was launched in November 2021 and, after a journey of almost a year, its destination will be to collide with the small asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger one called Didymos.
Now, using some of the world’s most powerful telescopes, the DART mission research team completed a six-night observing campaign last month to confirm earlier calculations of the orbit of Dimorphos, DART’s asteroid target. Everything goes according to plan.
“The measurements the team made in early 2021 were critical in making sure DART got to the right place at the right time for its kinetic impact on Dimorphos,” said Andy Rivkin, co-leader of the DART research team at Johns Hopkins University. applied. Physical Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “Confirming those measurements with new observations shows us that we don’t need any course change and that we are already on target.”
The event will be broadcast live
Although Dimorphos is a totally harmless asteroid, this technology will one day help defend Earth from a possible apocalypse. And it is that, although Dimorphos does not represent any danger to Earth, the test will allow NASA to evaluate if the impact of a spacecraft can be used to alter the trajectory of a hypothetical dangerous asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Hence, NASA is going to broadcast the event live so that we can all witness such an event that will boost our planetary defense.
Didymos and Dimorphos will make their closest approach to Earth in years in late September, passing as close as 10.8 million kilometers from the planet. So on September 26, the DART spacecraft will crash into Dimorphos, which is 170 meters wide, in an attempt to alter its orbit around Didymos, which is 780 meters wide. Will everything go as planned?
“This test will show that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it to change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be measured by ground-based telescopes. DART will provide important data to help better prepare for an asteroid that could pose an impact hazard to Earth, should one be discovered,” says NASA.
What will happen when this event occurs?
In October, after DART has slammed into the asteroid, the team will once again use ground-based telescopes around the world to search for mutual events and calculate Dimorphos’s new orbit. They expect the time it takes for the smaller asteroid to orbit Didymos to have shifted by several minutes. It will mean that the mission has been successful.
Recall that NASA considers any near-Earth object to be “potentially dangerous” if it is within 0.05 astronomical units (that is, less than 7,500,000 kilometers) and measures more than 140 meters in diameter. More than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids have been catalogued, but none currently pose a danger to our planet.
Referencia: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
