ILLUSTRATION. The DART spacecraft destroys the asteroid by crashing into it
Writer: Arif Budianto
KONTAN.CO.ID – New York. DART spacecraft (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) belonging to NASA destroyed the asteroid by crashing into it. When colliding with an asteroid, the impact energy will be equivalent to three tons of TNT explosion, thousands of debris will be scattered in space.
Objects that are beyond Earth often pose a threat that is difficult to predict when it will come. Likewise with asteroids that can threaten the safety of Earth’s inhabitants if their arrival is not detected.
Therefore, NASA or the United States Aeronautics and Space Administration has a project known as Double ASteroid Redirection Test (DART). The project involved a spacecraft that would crash into an asteroid so as not to head to Earth.
Quote from Sciencetimes, report from MIT Technology Review, NASA intends to intentionally destroy a spacecraft with an asteroid in a dress rehearsal to save Earth from a potential asteroid threat.
Engineers are close to completing the integration of the spacecraft, bringing it one step closer to launch. DART itself is a pretty interesting combination of old and modern technology.
The spacecraft is likely to launch in November 2021, as quoted from Republic World. After a year of transit, the plane will reach its target, namely Dimorphos.
Dimorphos is an asteroid the size of a stadium that surrounds the much larger asteroid known as Didymos. Well, the task of the DART spacecraft, which is the size of a car and weighs about 3 tons, will hit the asteroid at 4 miles per second (6.5 km/s).
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If everything goes according to plan, Dimorphos’ 12-hour orbit around Didymos will change every minute.
In the MIT study, Tom Statler, a scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, explains that they want to avoid catastrophic natural disasters. Scientists have conducted a significant study of what to expect from this change in Dimorphos’ trajectory.
A published study entitled “The Escited Spin State of Dimorphos Result From Dart Impact” also discusses the topic describing the first simulations aimed at constructing a post-impact image of Dimorphos. The researchers used collision momentum calculations to simulate the extent to which DART could accelerate or decelerate the spin of Dimorphos.
Although in the end their conclusions are still mixed.
According to initial simulations, DART collided with Dimorphos producing an impact energy equivalent to three tons of TNT explosions. The explosion produced thousands of debris that headed into space.
Slashgear citing MIT describes that the effect is similar to a golf cart hitting the side of a football stadium at 15,000 mph.
However, the change was not instant after the DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. The results will be visible over the next few days.
Dimorphos will first wobble a little, which will become more noticeable when the impact force pushes the asteroid’s spin out of balance. Since there is no friction between the asteroid and space, the asteroid will continue to rock until all the energy of the impact is converted into the asteroid’s motion.
Dimorphos can rotate in many directions, including along its axis, like a roasted chicken and keeps turning in the oven.
Understanding the results will require research into many very complex processes, from the state of irregular rotation to the effects of sunlight and heat propagation.
