Mt John data used as Nasa targets asteroid
MELBOURNE/CHRISTCHURCH: A Nasa spacecraft yesterday crashed into a deep space asteroid in a dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock heads for Earth.
The multimilliondollar rocket collided headon with the asteroid, which is the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, around 11.15am yesterday, in the world’s first fullscale planetary defence test.
University of Canterbury astronomers contributed to yesterday’s Nasa mission with data from the university’s Mt John Observatory at Tekapo.
The 570kg spacecraft named Dart and the small asteroid Dimorphos crashed into one another at high speed as part of Nasa’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission.
The test was to determine if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course.
‘‘This is technology that will help work towards removing a natural hazard entirely — something we can’t do with tsunami or volcanoes,’’ University of Canterbury planetary astronomer senior lecturer Dr Michele Bannister said yesterday.
‘‘We have been and will be observing the asteroid for preand postimpact photometry with the 1.8m MOA telescope at our UC Mt John Observatory,’’ she said.
University of Canterbury postdoctoral research fellow Dr Ryan Ridden is leading the data analysis.
To understand the effect of the impact, the UC research team will continue observing Didymos for a few months, alongside observatories around the world.
Australian scientists were also part of the international team working to hit the asteroid.
The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex received the final signals from the spacecraft as it hit Dimorphos.
While no known asteroid larger than 140m in size has a significant chance of hitting Earth for the next 100 years, it is estimated only about 40% have been identified to date.
In coming weeks, the Dart team will learn whether the collision interfered with the asteroid’s orbit. — AAP