Astronomer Professor Alan Fitzsimmons Spoke About the NASA Probe to Hit an Asteroid.
‘Who needs sleep on a day like this… we hit that sucker almost dead centre’, he says.
The Dart probe, operated by the American space agency, collided with an asteroid and self-destructed as a result.
The purpose of the collision was to see if space objects that could endanger Earth could be safely pushed aside.
Up until the point of impact with the target, a 160 m-wide object known as Dimorphos, Dart’s camera sent out an image every second.
NASA Spacecraft Will Crash Into Asteroid’s Moon.
NASA Spacecraft Will Crash Into Asteroid’s Moon.
Double Asteroid Redirection Test is referred to as Dart.
According to Dr. Andy Rivkin, mission lead at JHU-APL, it was created to accomplish “just what it says on the tin.”
If an asteroid were to come crashing down in the future, a method known as the “kinetic impactor technique” might be applied. The concept is quite straightforward: you ram your spaceship into the item you’re concerned about and utilize that mass and speed to gently alter the object’s orbit so that it misses the Earth instead of colliding with it.
Dimorphos and Didymos were picked out with care. Before the demonstration, neither was on a course to cross paths with Earth, and a minor change in their orbital distance will not have increased the risk.
However, there are some rocks that might be dangerous to us.
Even though more than 95% of the large asteroids that could cause a global extinction if they collided with Earth have been found through sky surveys (they won’t; their paths have been calculated and they won’t come close to our planet), there are still many smaller objects that have gone undetected that could cause trouble, even on a local or city scale.
An object the size of Dimorphos would create a crater that was perhaps 1 km broad and a few hundred meters deep. In the immediate area of impact, significant damage would result. Thus, the impulse to try to nudge an asteroid into moving a little bit slower or quicker. It wouldn’t be necessary for the change in velocity to be very significant, especially if it were done several years before the predicted encounter with Earth.
Dr. Nancy Chabot, a Dart mission scientist from JHU-APL, compared the situation to damaging a wristwatch and having it start to run a little bit faster. In the first day or two, you might not notice the mistake, but after a few weeks, you’ll start to notice that the watch is simply no longer tracking accurate time. It is moving quickly and is in advance of where it ought to be.
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Irving is the Chief Editor at the Landscape Insight. He lives just outside of New York. His writings have also been featured in some very famous magazines. When he isn’t reading the source material for a piece or decompressing with a comfort horror movie, Irving is usually somewhere in his car. You can reach Irving at – [email protected] or on Our website Contact Us Page.
