NASA to ram distant asteroid in bid to avoid future catastrophes on Earth

Spacecraft's collision impact with the target asteriod uses 'kinetic impactor' method to cause deflection

A robotic Nasa spacecraft is programmed to ram itself into a distant asteroid at 14,000 miles per hour (25,500 kilometres per hour) in deep space to demonstrate the agency’s future ability to defend Earth from hazardous space rocks on Monday. 

It’s a fast action scene straight out of a sci-fi movie:  The spacecraft, named DART, will first spot an asteroid the size of a football stadium named Dimorphos as a single pixel in its camera. About an hour later, if all goes as planned, DART will smash into its target with enough force to nudge the big space rock ever so slightly off course. The scene will play out nearly 7 million miles from Earth.

To be clear: Dimorphos doesn’t pose any threat to Earth, but the DART mission is the first physical test in space of one of Nasa’s primary tenets: planetary defence.

Scientists have identified most of the gigantic asteroids that could wipe out the planet, and none of those known objects pose a threat. What they’re worried about is the thousands of smaller asteroids similar in size to Dimorphos, flying in space near Earth that could one day cross its path. The DART spacecraft, built at Johns Hopkins University was launched in November of 2021. “You’re talking about something the size of a golf cart running into something the size of a stadium,” said Nancy Chabot, the coordination lead for DART at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Game of ‘DART’
 

What is it? Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART is the first mission to test a method of deflecting an asteroid for planetary defence. DART’s target is the binary asteroid system Didymos, which means “twin” in Greek and its moonlet Dimorphos, according to astronomy news website Space

Why is it important? The mission mimics NASA’s protocol if an asteroid were headed toward Earth. Didymos poses no threat to earth but is being used as a test subject to assess DART’s accuracy

How will it work? DART will deliberately impact Dimorphos at speeds of 25,500 kph. A direct hit will cause the targeted asteroid’s orbital speed to change by a fraction of a per cent and this shift should be enough to change its orbital period by several minutes, Space reported

• As the spacecraft approaches its target, an onboard high-resolution camera — DRACO will help navigate the DART spacecraft and take measurements of the target asteroid, including the size and shape of Dimorphos

Is it alone? LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging Asteroids) will follow DART with 2 optical cameras and observe the impact from a distance of about 1,000 km. It will help confirm whether the experiment has worked, the website said