Friday, March 29

The moment NASA successfully crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in the first planetary defense test


NASA has made history this Monday by getting a ship to crash at full speed against an asteroid with the aim of diverting its trajectory, in what is a vital test so that the Earth can defend itself in the future from dangerous space objects.

At 7:14 p.m. local time in the Eastern United States (23:14 GMT), the ship known as DART (dart in English) crashed at a speed of 6.4 kilometers per second against the surface of the asteroid Dimorphos, located about 11 million kilometers from Earth.

Although the impact could be seen on NASA’s live broadcast, scientists will have to wait days or even weeks to see if the unmanned spacecraft has managed to slightly alter the asteroid’s orbit.

A new age

It is the first time in human history that an attempt has been made to change the trajectory of a celestial body, in an attempt to protect the Earth from asteroids similar to the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. In addition, this is the first “planetary defense” test carried out by NASA, within the framework of the growing importance that the US Armed Forces have given to space and the possible threats that may be found in it.

NASA broadcast the impact live in a black and white video in which the small probe could be seen crashing into the asteroid. At the same time, viewers were able to count down to impact: “Three, two, one!” And they could see how at that moment the scientists from NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (LFA), who have worked together on this mission, burst into cheers, applause and hugs.

Shortly after launch, NASA Planetary Science Division Director Lori Glaze said the world has opened a new chapter tonight. “We are embarking on a new era for humanity, an era where we will have the ability to protect ourselves from something as dangerous as an asteroid impact. That is something incredible. We have never had that capability before,” Glaze said in a statement.

A ship the size of a refrigerator

The unmanned ship that made the historic trip is called DART, an acronym for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, measures almost the same as a refrigerator or a food vending machine, and its construction has cost more than 330 million of dollars.

For its part, the asteroid it crashed into is called Dimorphos (“two forms” in Greek). It is a space body of 160 meters in diameter similar to a moon and that revolves around another larger asteroid called Didymos, 780 meters in diameter and whose name means “twin” in Greek.

Together they are part of what is known as a double asteroid system and were selected by NASA because they pose no threat to Earth.

NASA scientists believe that the DART impact on Dimorphos may have caused a crater and launched small rocky fragments into space. A small satellite developed by the Italian Space Agency followed the operation from a distance to take images of the impact and send them to scientists for evaluation in the coming hours or days.

a movie mission

NASA administrator Bill Nelson explained on Twitter the objective of the test and compared it to the science fiction movie Armageddon, where the character played by Bruce Willis is part of a mission to destroy an asteroid that is dangerously close to Earth. Land.

“No, this is not a movie script,” Nelson said in a Twitter message before the crash, highlighting the mission’s value to Earth’s future survival.

The big difference between Armageddon and NASA’s mission is that, in this case, the goal was to slightly change the orbit of the asteroid and not destroy it. A strong impact could end in disaster with hundreds of space rocks falling to Earth.

For now, NASA does not have any object on its radar that could pose a direct threat to Earth for the next 100 years, but it has decided to test its technology to be prepared.





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