A NASA spacecraft is set to crash into an asteroid on Monday night, ET (Tuesday 27 morning Hong Kong time), slightly altering its orbit. This is NASA’s first “Defense Earth” test, which will help build Earth’s defenses against star attacks in the future.
NASA’s mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), is designed to understand whether the impact of such a man-made vehicle on an asteroid could help change the orbit of a planet that threatens Earth. “We will move an asteroid and change the motion of a natural object in space, which is unprecedented for humanity,” said Statler, the scientist in charge of the DART mission. The test vehicle for the DART mission concerns a bus It was launched in November last year and flew to the target asteroid. It will fly to the target asteroid on the 26th (Monday) and the estimated impact time is 7:14 pm EST Monday (7:14 am Hong Kong time Tuesday 27th).
The spacecraft was heading for a double asteroid system, consisting of the larger Didymos and the smaller Dimorphos, which orbited Didymos like the moon. Didymos is about 780 meters in diameter and Dimofas about 160. Although they are relatively close to the earth at 1.1 million kilometers (objects close to the Earth within 48.3 million kilometers of the earth) at the time of the impact mission, they are not matter what the impact mission is, it won’t pose a threat to the earth.
The DART mission test predicts that the aircraft will hit the smaller Demoface head-on at a speed of 21,600 kilometers per hour. Since the volume of the Demoface is about 100 times greater than that of the plane, the Demoface will not break after being It’s like destroying the Great Pyramid with a golf cart. At most, it hits a well. The purpose of the mission is to change the speed and functioning of Demoface, which should only change 1% of Demoface’s orbital speed after impact, and also slightly change the orbital period. The impact would also strengthen the gravitational force between Deimos and Didymus. Scientists say only a small change in space is enough to deflect an asteroid to pass Earth.
While there are currently no asteroids coming directly to Earth, there are more than 27,000 near-Earth objects of various shapes and sizes in space. The valuable data collected by this mission can help build defensive strategies to prevent “comet strikes”, particularly to know what force will deflect near-Earth objects that hit Earth. The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch a spacecraft in 2024 to study NASA’s impact follow-up, measuring the physical properties of the two asteroids, the impact craters and orbits of Demoface.
Schematic illustration of NASA’s spacecraft hitting a double asteroid system.
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