NASA DART spacecraft Rams Distant Asteroid in Test of Earth Defense

A NASA spacecraft successfully crashed into an asteroid approximately 7 million miles from Earth in a test to determine if the impact can nudge the space rock slightly off course.

By:BLOOMBERG
| Updated on: Sep 27 2022, 05:07 IST
In Pics: Huge asteroid heading for Earth today! NASA issues warning
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1/5 In the midst of numerous small asteroids passing by Earth closely these past couple of months, NASA has issued a warning that a gigantic asteroid is dangerously heading for our planet. This asteroid, named Asteroid 2022 RW is colossal in size. But will the asteroid impact the planet and extinguish all life on Earth? Or will it just miss the planet by enough distance to prevent any catastrophe? (Pixabay)
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2/5 Asteroid 2008 RW is already on its way towards Earth travelling at a staggering speed of 36,720 and will just miss the planet today, September 12. It will make its closest approach to Earth at a distance of 6.7 million kilometers, according to NASA. NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office has warned that Asteroid 2008 RW is nearly 310 feet wide, which is nearly the size of a skyscraper. (Pixabay)
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3/5 According to the-sky.org, the Asteroid 2008 RW was discovered on September 8, 2008 and belongs to the main Apollo group of asteroids. The asteroid 's farthest point from the Sun is 456 million kilometers, and the nearest point to the Sun is 139 million kilometers. Asteroid 2008 RW takes 1023 days to complete one orbit around the Sun. (Pixabay)
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4/5 NASA currently has a NEO Observations Program in place to track, and characterize at least 90 percent of the NEOs that are 140 meters or larger in size. Most of the asteroids are observed with the help of the NEOWISE Project which repurposed NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to work as a survey telescope and scan the sky for Near-Earth Objects. (NASA)
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5/5 NASA JPL also uses a variety of ground-based telescopes in the hunt for these asteroids. NASA JPL’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has also recently developed a next-generation asteroid impact monitoring system which has gone online. (HT_PRINT)
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NASA DART spacecraft has smashed into the Dimorphos asteroid, successfully completing the mission.  (Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- A NASA spacecraft successfully crashed into an asteroid approximately 7 million miles from Earth in a test to determine if the impact can nudge the space rock slightly off course.

NASA launched its DART spacecraft in November of 2021 with the express purpose of colliding with an asteroid about the size of a football stadium at 14,000 miles per hour.

The mission is NASA's first demonstration of the agency's planetary-defense initiative to protect Earth from the possibility of a hazardous collision with an asteroid. This particular asteroid, called Dimorphos, isn't headed toward our planet but was singled out by NASA to test a deflection technique. If measurements show the asteroid's course was even slightly altered, NASA will deem the mission a success.

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It will take days or weeks before astronomers know if DART's impact did its job, but a camera onboard the spacecraft captured a closeup view of the asteroid moments before the crash. A separate spacecraft, deployed from DART prior to impact, also captured images of the collision, and NASA has said it will share those images in coming days.

If in the future a hazardous asteroid is spotted heading toward Earth, it's possible that NASA or some other space agency could send a spacecraft to ram it just as DART has done. Such an impact could impart just enough momentum to slightly change the asteroid's trajectory so that, over time, it whizzes safely by Earth.

Dimorphos is actually an asteroid moonlet, orbiting around a much larger asteroid named Didymos, thus the name DART: Double Asteroid Redirection Test.

Now that DART has rammed into Dimorphos, astronomers on Earth will observe the asteroid system with optical and radar telescopes over the coming weeks, to see how the spacecraft changed the asteroid's orbit around Didymos. Just before impact, Dimorphos's orbit around Didymos was just under 12 hours. NASA anticipates that DART's collision could change the orbit by several minutes.

NASA picked Dimorphos as a target because of its size. Measuring 525 feet (160 meters) across, it represents the kinds of asteroid that NASA and other space agencies are most worried about. Astronomers have cataloged most of the giant asteroids that would destroy our planet, and none identified pose a risk for the foreseeable future. But astronomers believe they've found less than half of the many thousands of asteroids similar in size to Dimorphos that are flying near Earth. Were one of these rocks to ever crash into the planet, it could cause significant damage.

“This would be regionally devastating over a populated area, a city, a state, or a country,” said Nancy Chabot, the coordination lead for DART at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. “So you might not be talking global extinction, but you still want to be able to prevent this if you could.”

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First Published Date: 27 Sep, 05:06 IST
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