NASA will use spacecraft later this month to test a planetary defense method that could one day save Earth.
The double asteroid redirect test spacecraft , also known as DART, will be used as a battering ram to impact an asteroid not far from Earth on September 26th. The mission is international cooperation to protect. Earth from future asteroid impact.
"Although asteroids do not pose a threat to Earth, this is the world's first test of dynamic impact technology that uses spacecraft to deflect asteroids for Earth defense," NASA said. said Thursday.
In November 2021, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was launched on his DART from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
Now, ten months later, DART is scheduled to perform her three orbital maneuvers in the next three weeks to catch up with the asteroid. Scientists say each maneuver will reduce the orbital error margin required by the spacecraft to hit the asteroid known as Demorphos.
NASA says the navigation team will know Demorphos' position within 2 kilometers after its final maneuver on Sept. 25, about 24 hours before impact. From there, DART autonomously guides itself into a collision with an otherworldly space rock.
DART recently saw the double asteroid system Didymos for the first time . Its target, Demorphos.
Images taken from 20 million miles away showed the Didymo system to be very faint. Still, combining a series of images allows astronomers to pinpoint the exact location of Demorphos.
"It was the first time I'd seen a DRACO image of Didymos, so I was able to figure out the best settings for DRACO and tweak the software," says his DART navigation at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Leader Julie Bellerose said. "In September, we plan to narrow down DART's aim by locating Didymos more precisely." Earth Defense Theory is put to the test.
"The point of the Kinetic Impactor is you Ram Send a spacecraft to the asteroid of concern, thereby altering its orbit around the Sun," said planetary astronomer Andy Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. rice field.
DART does not change Didymo's trajectory. Its purpose is to change the velocity of the small satellite Dimorphos. Data from ground-based telescopes and spacecraft will finally tell us if the scientists' plan worked.
Asteroids move around the Sun at a speed of about 20 miles per second. Rivkin explained that if the kinetic impactor method were used to alter the trajectory, the engineer would want to alter it by a small amount, perhaps an inch or two per second.
That makes Didymus and its moon Dimorphus perfect practice targets. A small asteroid is orbiting Didymos, moving at a speed of about 1 foot per second, easier to measure than 20 miles per second.
If this works, the idea is to apply the same technology to larger asteroids. Until this mission, scientists could only simulate such effects in the laboratory. DART provides them with data to help solidify this defense plan.
