NASA’S DART MISSION TO DIVERT ASTEROID DIDYMUS By for Giza Death Star
So many people sent me versions of this story I cannot thank all of you, but this one was well over twenty submissions from readers of this website. That may not seem like much, but on my end, it’s a pattern.
And I can see why. Stories about asteroid defense have been percolating for years, getting a big nudge – not to coin a pun- back in the month before the Chelyabinsk meteor incident when then Russian premier Dmitri Medvedev went on TV calling for an international effort in asteroid defense… and that a month before the incident itself. At that time, I thought (and I still do think) Mr. Medvedev’s appearance only a month before the meteor roared over Chelyabinsk was more than coincidental. Mr. Medvedev went on to be questioned about how Russia could defend against an asteroid strike, and his response was even more peculiar: he indicated that Russia could use its many nuclear missiles to destroy or divert such an object, and then went on to mention “other means” to do so, leaving those “other means” unspecified.
With that in mind, consider this NASA article about its DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission:
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Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission
Here are NASA’s own words describing the “redirection test”:
ART 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 in Phase C, 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.
The binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos is the target for the DART demonstration. While the Didymos primary body is approximately 780 meters across, its secondary body (or “moonlet”) is about 160-meters in size, which is more typical of the size of asteroids that could pose the most likely significant threat to Earth. The Didymos binary is being intensely observed using telescopes on Earth to precisely measure its properties before DART arrives.
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.
As is evident, the operation is, well, “delicate”, but certainly not beyond current capabilities. Japan, after all, has already landed a probe on an asteroid. NASA plans to give the smaller of the double asteroid system a gentle little “nudge” so that observations and further refined telemetry can be performed.
