NASA's "Dart" mission to intercept and divert an asteroid

Pretty cool mission to intercept and alter the orbit of an asteroid, just successfully launched yesterday. This is a concept that I've been a fan of for a long time, while the chances of an impact are very low, it seems worthwhile to at least test out the technology and better understand the best ways to go about deflecting an asteroid before we're in a situation when time matters.

https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart

Quote:

DART is a planetary defense-driven test of technologies for preventing an impact of Earth by a hazardous asteroid. DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space. The DART mission is led by APL and managed under NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program at Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and the Science Mission Directorate’s Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. DART is a spacecraft designed to impact an asteroid as a test of technology. DART’s target asteroid is NOT a threat to Earth. This asteroid system is a perfect testing ground to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future. While no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, only about 40 percent of those asteroids have been found as of October 2021.

Quote:

The DART spacecraft will achieve the kinetic impact deflection by deliberately crashing itself into the moonlet at a speed of approximately 6.6 km/s, with the aid of an onboard camera (named DRACO) and sophisticated autonomous navigation software. The collision will change the speed of the moonlet in its orbit around the main body by a fraction of one percent, but this will change the orbital period of the moonlet by several minutes - enough to be observed and measured using telescopes on Earth.

This is actually a pretty good twitter thread on the subject:
https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/statu...61046615392259

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/3xk4tD4