Yesterday, NASA has successfully crashed one of their spacecrafts into an asteroid in order to change its course. The spacecraft hit the asteroid, called Dimorphos, at roughly 22,530 kilometers per hour (Bardan, 2022). To give you an idea of the scale of this asteroid versus the spacecraft, see the picture below. This was the first-ever planetary defense test in case an asteroid would ever be endangering the existence of the earth (Strickland, 2022).
The technology
The spacecraft is called DART which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test. NASA has equipped DART with a camera which allows the spacecraft to identify the asteroid it needs to hit and with the ability to autonomously guide itself to impact the asteroid with the use of algorithms (Bardan, 2022). In the live stream you could clearly see that the spacecraft was approaching two asteroids and targeted the smaller one (Achenbach, 2022).
Future
The technology of NASA that was used in the DART mission shows how technology can be used to protect the earth in the future. There is a growing focus on planetary defense by different organizations like NASA because of the large number of asteroids that exist and the potential one could eventually find its way to earth (Chang, 2022). The fact that the spacecraft was able to operate autonomously, and successfully crash into the asteroid creates an opportunity for potential future asteroid deflection missions (Chang, 2022).
References
Achenbach, J. (2022, September 26). NASA crashes spacecraft into asteroid, passing planetary defense test. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/09/26/nasa-dart-mission-asteroid-crash/
Bardan, R. (2022, September 27). NASA’s DART mission hits asteroid in first-ever planetary defense test. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-dart-mission-hits-asteroid-in-first-ever-planetary-defense-test
Chang, C. (2022, September 26). NASA smashes into an asteroid, completing a mission to save a future day. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/science/dart-nasa-asteroid-dimorphos-contact.html
Strickland, A. (2022, September 27). NASA’s DART mission successfully slams into an asteroid. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/26/world/dart-mission-nasa-scn/index.html
Very interesting article. Impressive how technology has brought us so far that we can literally send something to space to destroy an asteroid. This technology can be of major importance as we are going to face asteroids and planteroids. Maybe this technology could be pivotal for human existence. Do you think they can still improve this technology?