An image of NASA’s Darts mission. Provided by NASA.
Arrive at a giant asteroid rushing towards Earth, drill a hole in the asteroid and install a nuclear warhead. To avoid a collision with Earth by splitting the asteroid in two. This is the plot of the 1998 American Hollywood movie ‘Armageddon’. Experiments in the film are carried out in real life.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will launch a spacecraft to test whether it can change the orbit of an asteroid by impacting it on a nearby asteroid on the 24th (local time). This is the so-called ‘Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test)’ mission. The goal is to obtain the actual data needed to move an asteroid away from Earth, which is a potential threat to Earth.
Asteroids orbiting near Earth are always a threat to Earth. One of the most promising hypotheses that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago was an asteroid collision with the Earth. It is a scenario in which a huge amount of dust from the impact explosion covers the upper atmosphere, obscuring the sun and collapsing ecosystems.
The spacecraft ‘DART’, designed to confirm that it can change the orbit of an asteroid impact, will be launched on November 24 (local time) from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, aboard a SpaceX rocket Falcon 9. The target of the spacecraft DART weighing 610 kg is the near-Earth asteroid ‘Didymos’ and its satellite ‘Dimorphos’, which are not currently a threat to the Earth. Didymos, with a diameter of 780 m, is known to pass relatively close to the Earth as it orbits the Sun.
NASA’s spacecraft DART will autonomously navigate the target asteroid to see if it can collide and determine if the impact could change the asteroid’s orbit. After launching on the 24th, it is planned to collide the DART with Dimorphus between September 26 and October 1, 2022, when Didymos and Dimorphus are closest to the distance of 6.8 miles (about 10.94 km). The goal is to determine whether intentionally colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid is an effective way to change the course of the asteroid if an asteroid threatening Earth is discovered.
In the event of a collision with an asteroid, the cubesat (LICIACube) on DART separates it about 10 days before the collision and sends it to Earth. By analyzing data observed on Earth and images taken by CubeSat, it will calculate how much the asteroid’s orbit has changed due to the impact. NASA researchers predict that the impact of DART will change the speed of Dimorphus, which will change the orbital period of Didymos by a few minutes.
The traces such as the size and shape left by DART in the collision with Dimorphus will be taken by the European Space Agency’s spacecraft ‘Hera’. Hera, which is expected to arrive at Dimorphus in November 2024, will closely analyze the exact mass, composition and internal structure of Dimorphus, as well as the size and shape of the crater left by the collision with DART.
Jay Tate, director of the Center for Near-Earth Objects Information Center in the United States, said, “To change the orbital direction of an asteroid, it is necessary to consider several variables such as the structure of the asteroid, the combination of internal materials, rotational speed and orbital speed. We will take it to the next level.”
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