One day it may stop being a Hollywood story. One day an astronomer will frown, intrigued by a bright spot that has suddenly appeared in telescope images. You’ll be swiping your finger across the screen and no, it won’t be just dust on the computer screen or an annoying bug on the radar. Around the world, other astronomers will face the same pre-apocalyptic landscape: an asteroid tens of kilometers across on a collision course with Earth.
The target, Dimorphos, is a 160-meter-long moon orbiting the asteroid 65803 Didymos, which is considered a potentially dangerous object, because it could collide with Earth (its path around the Sun intersects with Earth’s) and cause considerable damage to the Earth. planet.
The scenario is so realistic that the US space agency invested 324.5 million dollars crash a spaceship (which cost 95% of that amount, 308 million dollars) into a celestial body that doesn’t even pose a threat to Earth, just to test if this space defense technology really works. The target, Dimorphos, is a 160-meter-long moon that orbits the asteroid 65803 Didymos — this yes, considered a potentially dangerous object, because it could collide with the Earth (its path around the Sun intersects with that of the Earth). Earth) and cause considerable damage to the planet.
DART, an acronym for “Double Asteroid Redirection Test”, left Earth in November 2021 and travels through space at almost 24,000 kilometers per hour. There is nothing on board but a high-resolution camera, which also doubles as a compass, and a small Italian Space Agency satellite due to launch on Thursday, five days before impact, to observe the collision. On the night from Monday to Tuesday, when you approach little Dimorphos, nothing will stop you: at 00:17 on September 27, it will hit the target at six kilometers per second and thus the mission of this millionaire spaceship is fulfilled. The moment will be recorded by a small Italian satellite, which will transmit images of the impact and the dust cloud to Earth. In 2024, a European Space Agency mission will head to Dimorphs again to study what happened to the moon after the collision.
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The scenario is so realistic that the US space agency invested 324.5 million dollars crash a spaceship (which cost 95% of that amount, 308 million dollars) into a celestial body that doesn’t even pose a threat to Earth, just to test if this space defense technology really works. The target, Dimorphos, is a 160-meter-long moon that orbits the asteroid 65803 Didymos — this yes, considered a potentially dangerous object, because it could collide with the Earth (its path around the Sun intersects with that of the Earth). Earth) and cause considerable damage to the planet.
DART, an acronym for “Double Asteroid Redirection Test”, left Earth in November 2021 and travels through space at almost 24,000 kilometers per hour. There is nothing on board but a high-resolution camera, which also doubles as a compass, and a small Italian Space Agency satellite due to launch on Thursday, five days before impact, to observe the collision. On the night from Monday to Tuesday, when you approach little Dimorphos, nothing will stop you: at 00:17 on September 27, it will hit the target at six kilometers per second and thus the mission of this millionaire spaceship is fulfilled. The moment will be recorded by a small Italian satellite, which will transmit images of the impact and the dust cloud to Earth. In 2024, a European Space Agency mission will head to Dimorphs again to study what happened to the moon after the collision.
Source: Observadora
