WASHINGTON: NASA is preparing a mission to deliberately destroy the spacecraft into an asteroid – a trial of humanity needs to stop giant stones from destroying life on earth.
This might sound like science fiction, but Dart (Double Asteroid Different Test) is a real evidence experiment, blowing up at 10:21 Packic Tuesday (0621 GMT Wednesday) ride a SpaceX rocket from the Vandenberg space base in California.
The aim is to change the Dimorphos trajectory a little, “Moonlet” is around 525 feet (160 meters, or two Liberty statues) wide that surrounds the much larger asteroids called DIYMOS (2,500 feet diameter).
The pair orbits the sun together.
The impact must be made in the fall of 2022, when the binary asteroid system is 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, almost the closest point they have ever gotten.
“What we are trying to learn is how to deflect threats,” Top Nasa Scientist Thomas Zuburchen said the $ 330 million project, the first of its kind.
Obviously, asteroids in questions pose a threat to our planet.
But they are included in the body class known as objects near the earth (NEO), which approaches within 30 million miles.
The Planetary NASA defense coordination office is most interested in size greater than 460 feet, which has the potential to raise the entire city or region with many times the average nuclear bomb energy.
There are 10,000 Asteroid Deard-Earth known to be 460 feet in size or larger, but no one has a significant opportunity to hit in the next 100 years.
A big warning: scientists think there are still 15,000 more objects waiting to be found.
Planet scientists can create miniature impacts in the laboratory and use results to make advanced models on how to divert asteroids – but the model is always lower than the real world test.
Scientists say the DIYMOS-Dimorphos system is “an ideal natural laboratory,” because Earth-based telescopes can easily measure the variation of couples brightness and assess the time Moonlet needs to orbit her brother.
Because the current orbit period is known, changes will reveal the effect of the impact, which is scheduled to occur between September 26 and October 1, 2022.
What’s more, because the asteroid orbit has never cut our planet, they are considered safer to learn.
DART probe, which is a large fridge size box with a limousine-sized solar panel on both sides, will slammorphos with only more than 15,000 miles per hour.
Andy Rivkin, the Dart Investigation Team took the lead, said that the current orbital period was 11 hours and 55 minutes, and the team expected a kick would shave about 10 minutes from that time.
There is some uncertainty about how much energy will be transferred with impact, because the composition and internal moonlet porosity are unknown.
The more debris produced, the more encouragement will be delivered in Dimorphos.
“Every time we show up on asteroids, we find things we don’t expect,” Rivkin said.
DART spacecraft also contains advanced instruments for navigation and imaging, including Italian false spaceships Italy for asteroid imaging (Liciacube) to watch accidents and effects.
“The cubesi will give us, we hope, the shots, the most spectacular images of the impact of Darts and Ejecta boast of asteroids.
It will be a truly historic and spectacular image,” said Tom Stall, Dart program scientist.
What is called the “Kinetic Impact” method is not the only way to divert asteroids, but it is the only technique that is ready to use with current technology.
Other people who have been hypothesized include flying a close spaceship to provide a small gravity style.
Others detonate a nuclear explosion near – but not on the object itself, as in the film Armageddon and the profound impact – which might create many more dangerous objects.
Scientists expect an asteroid attack of 460 feet once every 20,000 years.
Asteroids six miles or wider – such as those who attacked 66 million years ago and caused the extinction of most lives on earth, including dinosaurs – there were around 100-200 million years.