Disarm-ageddon
NASA fires probe to deflect asteroid
NASA launched the world’s first “full-scale mission” to test asteroid-deflecting technology in hopes of protecting Earth from a potential “Armageddon.”
The space agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test craft (DART) lifted off late Tuesday atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vanderberg Space Force Base on California’s Central Coast.
The mission of the $330 million project is to slam into a 530-foot asteroid, Dimorphos, at about 15,000 mph by late September 2022, in order to test a potential method of defense against potentially catastrophic asteroid or comet hazards.
The project is “something of a replay of Bruce Willis’ movie, ‘Armageddon,’ although that was totally fictional,” NASA’s administrator, Bill Nelson, told The New York Times.
In the 1998 Michael Bay film, Willis and Ben Affleck starred as oil drillers on a space mission to nuke a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
Scientists estimate DART’s impact into Dimorphos — which orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos — will shorten its path around the larger space rock by several minutes.
“Researchers will pre cisely measure tha change using telescope on Earth,” a NASA state ment reads. “Their r sults will validat and improve sc entific co puter model critical to pre dicting th effectiveness of th kinetic impact as a reliable method for asteroid deflection.” “Asteroid Dimorphos: we’re coming for you,” NASA tweeted with a 30-second clip of DART’s liftoff.
“You can rest easy,” the agency tweeted. “We’re going to hit a small moonlet the size of a football stadium with a spacecraft the size of a vending machine. We hope to change its rbit a tiny bit, but it will stay in orbit around its parent asnot teroid, which is a hazChabot ard to Earth.”
Nancy of Johns Hopkins Applied PhysLaboratory, ics which is overseeing DART, said, “This isn’t oing to destroy the asteroid — it’s just going to give it a small nudge.”
Nelson said NASA was turning science fiction into “science fact” with the historic launch.
While there isn’t a currently known asteroid on an impact course toward Earth — and none for at least 100 years — NASA hopes to be able to identify any potential impact years or decades in advance, according to Lindley Johnson, the agency’s planetary defense officer.
“DART is one aspect of NASA’s work to prepare Earth should we ever be faced with an asteroid hazard,” he said.
NASA is also prepping its Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission, a space-based infrared telescope set for launch later this decade, to identify hazardous asteroids and comets within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit.