Save the Earth, NASA Plane Will Hit Asteroid

Bisnis.com, JAKARTA – Have you ever watched the film Armageddon, starring Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis?

In the film they both carry a mission to glide into space to save the earth.

Well, the mission is now becoming real. NASA’s US Space Agency will soon send rockets into space to destroy asteroids that will hit the earth. This mission is a rescue effort so that the earth is not hit by asteroids that can cause damage.

The mission, named Dasa Nasa, will be launched by 2022. Nasa has already officially named the space object NASA will destroy under the name Dimorphos.

Previously known as Didymos B. The name was suggested by Kleomenis Tsiganis, a planetary scientist at the Aristotelian University in Thessaloniki and a member of [Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)] and the Hera team, “IAU said in a statement.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is the first mission developed for the Planet Defense Coordination Office, which was established in 2016, and a part of NASA’s broader planetary defense planning, “the space agency wrote in a separate statement.

The plan, DART launched a SpaceX rocket in mid-2021, which finally crashed into Dimorphos towards the end of 2022.

The European Space Agency (ESA), which helped NASA with its asteroid deflection plan, compared Dimorphos to the Great Pyramid of Egypt, with a diameter of about 160 meters (525 ft).

In contrast, the larger Didymos has a width of around 2,560 feet – both are considered “potentially dangerous” near Earth objects.

ESA is currently building the Hera spacecraft, which will visit the Didymos asteroid system, assuming the DART managed to crash into Dimorphos.

If successful, Hera will be launched in 2024 and arrive in 2026 to check the findings.

In April 2019, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said that an asteroid attack was not something to be taken lightly and might be Earth’s biggest threat.