Jakarta –
NASA will crash the spaceship to the surface asteroid in a few days. This collision is part of the mission Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) first launched in November 2021.
Since launch 10 months ago, DART has flown 11 million km from Earth to the asteroid (65803) Didymus and the moon or the small moon named Abode. Hopefully, DART will crash into Dimorphos’ surface on Monday (9/26) tomorrow.
The DART mission is NASA’s first experiment to find out if a collision like this could change the direction of the asteroid. This method should be a solution to protect the Earth from dangerous asteroids like the one that extinguished the dinosaurs.
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Although changing the asteroid’s orbit from a distance of 11 million km may seem complicated and terrifying, the NASA team and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) believe the mission will be successful.
“What we can say right now is that all subsystems in the spacecraft are green, healthy, work really well. We have a lot of fuel and a lot of power,” said Edward Reynolds, DART Project Manager at JHUAPL, quoted by Space, on Sunday. 25/9/2022).
“We’ve had a lot of practice and some of the drills are very simple. At this point, I can say that the team is ready. The ground systems are ready and the spacecraft is healthy and in time for Monday’s collision.”
DART’s target is Dimorphos, a moon with a diameter of 170 meters. Similar to the moon, this moon surrounds a larger asteroid, called Didymos, which is 780m long.
Don’t expect a collision between DART and Dimorphos will produce a massive Armageddon-style explosion. The 589kg spacecraft will push and provide a slight push towards Dimorphos which NASA says could change its orbital period to alter its gravitational effect on Didymos, and thus change the trajectory of both.
The collision itself will be performed Monday at 7:14 PM Eastern Time or 6:14 AM WIB. As we approach the second collision, the engineers of the DART team will work hard to ensure that this small plane stays on its trajectory.
Interestingly, this desperate mission can be watched via the livestream provided by NASA. There are two ways to watch this mission, namely via a live stream on NASA TV or a live feed from the Didymos Reconnaissance camera and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO).
NASA has promised a spectacular vision of the moment when DART crashes into Dimorphos that it will all be broadcast. When will you be able to see a NASA plane crash into an asteroid?
Watch videos”NASA prepares for asteroid collision test mission“
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