NASA is planning a defensive mission just like in the movie “aRmageddon”
Preparations are currently underway for an important NASA mission. The DART mission (NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is a test against future potential threats to Earth. The fall of an asteroid 65 million years ago, scientists believe the direct cause of the disappearance of most species living at that time, including dinosaurs. Today, NASA plans to “take revenge” on asteroids and – as vividly described by foreign media – to make sure that in the event of a repeat of such a situation, we avoid the fate of dinosaurs.
NASA will test the technology of changing the direction of the asteroid. The DART mission will begin on November 24 and will eventually take place in stages. First, a special spacecraft will be launched into space with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Base in California. This probe will be designed to collide with an asteroid. The goal of the DART mission will be Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the asteroid Didymos.
This will be the first demonstration of this type of technology. The accreditation of journalists who want to closely observe the work of NASA during this mission has just begun, so we can count on a live broadcast. Two decades ago, it was discovered that there is an asteroid in the Solar System and Didymos orbiting the moon. Didymos means “twin” in Greek, so he describes a situation where a larger asteroid, almost a kilometer in diameter, moves along with a small moon.
In September 2022, Didymos and Dimorphos will be relatively close to Earth and 11 million km from our planet. This is the perfect time to use the DART sensor. This will be the next stage of the mission. The collision of DART with Dimorphos can change the trajectory of the asteroid, and this change can be observed and measured from Earth.
“Astronomers will be able to compare measurements from ground-based telescopes before and after the DART impact to determine how much Dimorphos’ orbit has changed. This is a key measurement that will tell us how the asteroid reacted after colliding with DART,” said Tom Statler, a scientist at NASA headquarters.
