Home » Worried about the Earth being hit by NASA’s first spacecraft to hit an asteroid | Dart | NASA | SpaceX

Worried about the Earth being hit by NASA’s first spacecraft to hit an asteroid | Dart | NASA | SpaceX

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[Epoch Times November 24, 2021](Epoch Times reporter Li Yan comprehensive report) The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a spacecraft in the evening on Tuesday (November 23) to perform a mission to strike an asteroid for testing When the earth is threatened by asteroids, whether it is possible to knock the oncoming space rocks out of orbit through manual intervention.

On Tuesday night, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

“Fox News” reported that this $330 million project seemed to echo Bruce Willis’ film “The End of the World.”

If all goes well, in September 2022, the DART spacecraft will hit the 525-foot-wide Dimorphos asteroid head-on at a speed of 15,000 mph.

“This is not to destroy the asteroid, but to give it a small excitement,” said Nancy Chabot, mission officer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, who manages the project.

And Dimophos is orbiting a larger asteroid, Didymos. This pair of asteroids is not dangerous to the Earth, but it provides scientists with a way to measure the effects of collisions.

It takes Deimos to make a circle around Deimos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. The goal of DART is to slow down Di Dimos through collision and move it closer to the larger Di Di Mos, reducing its orbital time by 10 minutes.

Changes in the orbital period will be measured by telescopes on Earth. For this mission, Dimophos’ orbital time changed only by 73 seconds, which was considered a success.

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If DART technology proves to be useful, if an asteroid hits the earth, scientists can expect to change its orbit several years or decades in advance.

Chabot said: “A small stimulus” will make a big change in its future position, and then the asteroid and the Earth will not collide.

NASA: Earth has no impact on the planet for at least 100 years

Scientists constantly search for asteroids and map their routes to determine whether they will hit the earth.

“Although there is no known asteroid in the path of an impact with the Earth, we do know that there are a large number of near-Earth asteroids there.” NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson said, “Planets The key to defense is to find them before they become impact threats.”

DART weighs 610 kilograms, and it will take 10 months for the spacecraft to reach the pair of asteroids. The collision will occur approximately 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth.

Thomas Zurbuchen, deputy director of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said that NASA is only learning in advance how to defend against possible impact threats to the Earth.

“Please rest assured that the asteroid we are about to strike has not yet poses a threat to the Earth.” He said, “Of all the near-Earth objects we know today, none of them can be formed against the Earth in about 100 years. threat.”

At that time, DART will release a small observation spacecraft provided by the Italian Space Agency 10 days in advance. The spacecraft will always follow it.

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DART will stream the video until it is destroyed on impact. After three minutes, the trailing spacecraft will take pictures of the impact location and ejecta.

Editor in charge: Lin Yan#

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