NASA To Test Crashing Spacecraft Into Asteroids To Save Humanity In Case Sci-Fi Becomes Reality
When someone thinks about NASA and a plan to divert a massive asteroid from crashing into Earth, the image of astronauts drilling holes into the space rock itself to place explosives may come to mind thanks to Hollywood. But the true to life plan that has been devised is much less theatrical and a whole lot more practical. And NASA is close to launching it for its first in-space test run.
The cleverly named Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is scheduled to launch on November 24th aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The project is part of NASA's planetary defense system and is aimed at redirecting an asteroid away from Earth by slamming a large spacecraft into its surface and altering its path.
Dimorphos has a diameter of 160 meters or 525 feet, while its larger counterpart Didymos has a diameter of 780 meters or 0.48 miles. The Didymos system is an eclipsing binary viewed from Earth. Essentially this means that the orbiting Dimorphos passes in front of and behind Didymos as viewed from our own humble rock. This allows scientist to measure the variation in brightness of the combined system to determine the orbital path of Dimorphos. This same technique will be used after DART crashes into its surface to determine if it had any effect on its orbital path. The timing of the mission was chosen in order to minimize the distance between Earth and Didymos to ensure the optimal quality of telescopic observation.
NASA has scheduled a media briefing at 1 pm ET today to preview the upcoming launch of DART. It will cover its technology and plans of sending the spacecraft into the surface of Dimorphos, as well as what it hopes to glean from all of the data that will come from it. You can check out the briefing via the NASA app, the agency's website, and on NASA's Twitter account.
Most scientist do not believe the next few generations of humans will ever have to worry about such a threat. But if an asteroid ever does take aim on planet Earth, it's nice to know NASA has a plan that doesn't involve sending Bruce Willis into space (hopefully).