Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Nasa's Dart spacecraft 'changed path of asteroid'
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) is a NASA space mission to test a planetary defense against near-Earth objects such as asteroids. It was designed to assess how much a spacecraft impact an asteroid’s movement by a direct hit. The probe was launched last November and crashed into Dimorphos, the minor planet moon of the much larger asteroid Didymos, at about 11 million kilometers away from Earth. The refrigerator-seized probe hit Dimorphos at a speed of 22,000km/hour and successfully changed the orbit time of the moon by 32 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes, a 4% change in the orbital period. The diameter of Dimorphos is about 160 meters, about half of the Eiffel Tower while that of Didymos is 780 meters, big enough to give a substantial impact on Earth if it hit directly. As part of the planetary defense strategy, such asteroid deflection method might be used in the future. Could dinosaurs have been saved if they had had such a defense system?
Enjoy reading the article to learn about this planetary-defense test mission.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63221577
Nasa's Dart spacecraft 'changed path of asteroid'
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) is a NASA space mission to test a planetary defense against near-Earth objects such as asteroids. It was designed to assess how much a spacecraft impact an asteroid’s movement by a direct hit. The probe was launched last November and crashed into Dimorphos, the minor planet moon of the much larger asteroid Didymos, at about 11 million kilometers away from Earth. The refrigerator-seized probe hit Dimorphos at a speed of 22,000km/hour and successfully changed the orbit time of the moon by 32 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes, a 4% change in the orbital period. The diameter of Dimorphos is about 160 meters, about half of the Eiffel Tower while that of Didymos is 780 meters, big enough to give a substantial impact on Earth if it hit directly. As part of the planetary defense strategy, such asteroid deflection method might be used in the future. Could dinosaurs have been saved if they had had such a defense system?
Enjoy reading the article to learn about this planetary-defense test mission.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63221577
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