Science

NASA spacecraft will soon intentionally crash into a tiny asteroid

NASA spacecraft will soon intentionally crash into a tiny asteroid
Written by adrina

A NASA spacecraft that intentionally crashes into an asteroid is closing in on its target.

The DART mission, or Double Asteroid Redirection Test, will rendezvous with the space rock on September 26 after being launched 10 months ago.

The spacecraft will impact an asteroid’s moon to see how it affects the movement of an asteroid in space. A live stream of images captured by the spacecraft will be available on NASA’s website beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET that day. The impact is expected to occur around 7:14 p.m. ET.

The mission heads for Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Didymos. The asteroid system poses no threat to Earth, NASA officials said, making it a perfect target to test for kinetic impact — which might be needed if an asteroid is ever on its way to impacting Earth.

The event will be the first full-scale demonstration of the agency’s deflection technology capable of protecting the planet.

“For the first time ever, we will measurably change the orbit of a celestial body in the universe,” said Robert Braun, director of space research at Johns Hopkins University of Applied Physics.

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that place them within 30 million miles (48.3 million kilometers) of Earth. Detecting the threat of near-Earth objects, or NEOs, that could cause severe damage is a major focus for NASA and other space agencies around the world.

COLLISION COURSE

Astronomers discovered Didymos more than two decades ago. It means “twin” in Greek, a reference to how the asteroid forms a binary system with the smaller asteroid or moon. Didymos is almost 0.8 kilometers in diameter.

Meanwhile, Dimorphos is 160 meters in diameter and its name means “two forms”.

The spacecraft recently caught its first glimpse of Didymos using an instrument called the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation, or DRACO. It was about 20 million miles (32 million kilometers) from the binary asteroid system when it took pictures in July.

On the day of impact, images captured by DRACO will not only show our first glimpse of Dimorphos, but the spacecraft will use them to pilot itself for an encounter with the tiny moon.

During the event, these images will be streamed back to Earth at a rate of one per second and provide a “pretty stunning” view of the moon, said Nancy Chabot, planetary scientist and DART coordination lead at the Applied Physics Laboratory.

At the time of impact, Didymos and Dimorphos will be relatively close to Earth – within 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers).

The spacecraft will be accelerating at about 15,000 miles per hour (24,140 kilometers per hour) when it collides with Dimorphos.

According to NASA, he is designed to collide with Dimorphos to alter the asteroid’s movement in space. This collision is recorded by LICIACube, or Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, an escort cube satellite provided by the Italian Space Agency.

The briefcase-sized CubeSat hitchhiked into space on DART. It was recently deployed from the spaceship and travels behind to record what is happening.

Three minutes after impact, the CubeSat flies past Dimorphos to capture images and video. While not available immediately, the video will be streamed back to Earth in the weeks and months following the collision.

PROTECT THE PLANET

Dimorphos was chosen for this mission because its size compares to asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. The spacecraft is about 100 times smaller than Dimorphos, so it won’t wipe out the asteroid.

The rapid impact will only change Dimorphos’ speed as it orbits Didymos by 1%, which doesn’t sound like much – but it will change the moon’s orbital period.

“Sometimes we describe it like driving a golf cart into a big pyramid or something,” Chabot said. “But for Dimorphos, this is really about deflecting the asteroid, not disrupting it. That won’t blow up the asteroid; it will not break him into many pieces.”

The nudge will displace Dimorphos slightly and gravitationally tie it more tightly to Didymos — so the collision won’t change the binary’s path around Earth or increase its chances of becoming a threat to our planet, Chabot said.

Dimorphos completes an orbit around Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. After impact, that may change to 11 hours and 45 minutes, but subsequent observations will determine how much of a shift has taken place.

Astronomers will use ground-based telescopes to observe the binary asteroid system and see how much Dimorphos’ orbital period has changed, which will determine whether DART was successful.

Space-based telescopes such as Hubble, Webb, and NASA’s Lucy mission will also observe the event.

In four years, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will arrive to study Dimorphos, measure the Moon’s physical properties, and study the DART impact and Moon’s orbit.

There are currently no asteroids on a direct impact course with Earth, but there are more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids of all shapes and sizes.

The valuable data collected by DART and Hera will contribute to planetary defense strategies, particularly understanding what kind of force can shift the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid that could collide with our planet.

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