Irishman’s NASA mission
AN IRISH professor working on the NASA mission to send a spacecraft crashing into an asteroid said such technology can prevent a deadly Earth impact.
Ten months after launch, NASA’s asteroid-deflecting DART spacecraft neared a planned impact with its target last night in a test of the world’s first planetary defence system, designed to prevent a doomsday collision with Earth.
The cube-shaped “impactor” vehicle, roughly the size of a vending machine with two rectangular solar arrays, was on course to fly into the asteroid Dimorphos, about as large as a football stadium, and self-destruct around 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) some 11 million kilometres from Earth.
The mission’s finale will test the ability of a spacecraft to alter an asteroid’s trajectory, plowing into the object at high speed to nudge it astray. agency’s most ambitious missions.
A professor at Queen’s University Belfast said NASA’s DART mission is proof that technology can prevent a small asteroid hitting Earth.
Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, who is an expert in the observation and measurement of asteroids orbiting the sun and is a member of the NASA DART Investigation Team, said technology to prevent asteroids hitting Earth exists.
Test
He said: “I’ve been waiting 20 years to see a planetary defence test to be performed.
“This will give us our first proof that we have the technology to prevent a small asteroid hitting Earth.
“Asteroids the size of Dimorphos or larger hit our planet only once every 35,000 years or so, but we only know what a small fraction of them are.
“So one could be heading our way in the near future, and smaller asteroids hit us
much more frequently.”