NASA is preparing to destroy a little, innocuous asteroid millions of kilometers away in a first-of-its-kind, world-saving experiment.
Dart, a spacecraft, will focus on the asteroid on Monday with the intention of colliding with it head-on at 14,000 mph (22,500 kph). This will show that, if a killer asteroid ever comes our way, we would have a fighting chance of deflecting it. The impact should be just enough to move the asteroid into a slightly tighter orbit around its companion space rock.
Although the crash will be observed by telescopes and cameras, it will take months to determine whether it truly altered the orbit.
With the launch of Dart last October, the $325 million planetary defense test got underway.
Dimorphos, which is around 7 million miles (9.6 million kilometers) from Earth, is the asteroid with the bull's-eye on it. Its original name, Didymos, which means "twin" in Greek, refers to its little sidekick, a 2,500-foot (780-meter) asteroid. Didymos, which was found in 1996, spins so quickly that astronomers think it threw off debris that finally created a moonlet. Dimorphos orbits its parent planet at a distance of less than a mile and is about 525 feet (160 meters) wide (1.2 kilometers).
According to Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist and head of the mission team at Johns Hopkins University, which is overseeing the project, "This really is about asteroid deflection, not disruption." "The asteroid won't be blown up by this. It won't shatter into numerous pieces. Instead, the impact will create a crater tens of yards (meters) across and launch 2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of soil and debris into space.
According to NASA, there is absolutely no chance that either asteroid will ever pose a threat to Earth. The couple was chosen for this reason.
THE IMPACTOR, DART
Given that Dart, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is simply a battering ram and will be destroyed, Johns Hopkins developed it using a minimal strategy. It only has one tool, a camera that is used for navigation, targeting, and documenting the outcome of the action. Dimorphos will appear as a point of light an hour before impact, looming larger and larger in the camera images sent back to Earth. It is thought to be essentially a pile of rubble.
Managers are optimistic that Dart won't unintentionally collide with the bigger Didymos. The navigation system of the spacecraft is built to be able to discern between the two asteroids and, in the last 50 minutes, focus on the smaller one.
The spacecraft, which weighs 1,260 pounds (570 kilograms) and is about the size of a small vending machine, will collide with an asteroid weighing around 11 billion pounds (5 billion kilograms). Chabot remarked, "We sometimes compare it to driving a golf cart into the Great Pyramid.
It will be the end of Dart's journey unless it misses, which NASA estimates are less than 10%. If it screams past both space rocks, it will come across them once more a few years later for Take 2.
SAVE THE EARTH
Every 11 hours and 55 minutes, Little Dimorphos completes a lap around Big Didymos. Dart's impact should reduce that time by around ten minutes. It will take months to confirm the moonlet's altered orbit, even though the strike itself should be immediately obvious. Dart and a small tagalong satellite will both have cameras that will record the crash in detail. As Dart strikes Dimorphos and sends streams of rock and dirt flowing into space, telescopes on all seven continents, the Hubble and Webb space telescopes, and NASA's asteroid-hunting Lucy spacecraft may observe a dazzling flare.
In order to determine whether Dart changed Dimorphos' orbit, the observatories will follow the pair of asteroids as they orbit the sun. A European spacecraft by the name of Hera will retrace Dart's path in 2024 to evaluate the impact outcomes.
The moonlet's location should only be slightly altered by the intended shove, but over time, according to Chabot, this will add up to a significant alteration. In order for this strategy to be effective, she explained, "you would have to do it five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years in advance if you were doing this for planetary defense." According to NASA program supervisor Andrea Riley, the experiment will still yield insightful data even if Dart misses. "We test for this reason. Instead of waiting until there is a real need, we want to act immediately, she said.
MANY ASTEROID MISSIONS
The Earth is actively pursuing asteroids. Nearly a pound (450 grams) of debris from the approaching asteroid Bennu has been gathered by NASA. The stockpile ought to show up in September. Japan was the first country to successfully recover samples from asteroids twice. China plans to launch a mission in 2025 to do the same. Meanwhile, NASA's Lucy probe, which was launched last year, is currently traveling to asteroids close to Jupiter. The Near-Earth Asteroid Scout spacecraft, which will use a solar sail to fly past a space asteroid that is less than 60 feet (18 meters) in diameter next year, is currently loaded into NASA's new moon rocket and is waiting for liftoff.
NASA will launch a census-taking telescope in 2026 to discover dangerous, elusive asteroids. One asteroid expedition has been put on hold while an impartial review panel considers its future. A metal-rich asteroid between Mars and Jupiter should have been the destination of NASA's Psyche mission this year, but the team was unable to test the flight software in time.
A HOLYWOOD VIEW
Over the years, Hollywood has produced scores of killer space-rock films, like "Armageddon" in 1998, which brought Bruce Willis to Cape Canaveral for production, and "Don't Look Up" last year, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and an all-star cast. Since 1979's "Meteor," which he considers to be his personal favorite "since Sean Connery played me," NASA's planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson believes he has seen them all. He pointed out that while certain sci-fi movies are more accurate than others, entertainment usually comes out on top. The good news is that there don't appear to be any risks for the foreseeable future.
Otherwise, "it would be like the movies, right?" quipped Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's science mission director. But the unknown threats are what worry me. There are millions of smaller but still-dangerous things zipping around, with less than half of the 460-foot (140-meter) objects confirmed. These dangers are genuine, and what makes this period unique is that we have options, according to Zurbuchen. Not by detonating an asteroid as Willis' character did; it would be a very last resort; and not by pleading with the government to intervene as DiCaprio's character did fruitlessly. The greatest strategy, if time permits, might be to nudge the dangerous asteroid out of the road, like Dart.
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