Science Fiction Is Getting Real: NASA Launches a Vehicle Into Space In November To Stop Asteroids From Crashing Into The Earth
NASA has given a test date for the planetary defense system ‘DART’, which has been under development for many years. Thanks to the DART project, is aimed to change the orbit of asteroids that pose a danger to the Earth.
Research and observation activities are continuing within the scope of the asteroid defense system ‘dOuble Asteroid Deflection System’ (DART) project, which is being carried out jointly by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and NASA. DART aims to protect the Earth from possible asteroid impacts that pass near it and pose a danger.
As part of the DART mission, NASA recently announced that a new spacecraft will be launched to carry out a planned controlled collision with an asteroid orbiting close to the earth’s orbit. With this launch, the DART defense system against celestial bodies will be tested for the first time.
DARTS will be a first in planetary defense
The first launch in the DART project, which NASA said was launched in 2003 when the asteroid in question passed to Earth from a distance of 6 million kilometers, will take place on November 23 with the SpaceX company’s Falcon 9 rocket, owned by Elon Musk. The rocket will be sent to space from Vandenberg Space Force Base, located in California. The project, which will be the first in planetary defense, aims to create a 1 percent change in the orbit of the asteroid by hitting Didymos B, which is orbiting the Didymos A asteroid, the center of the Didymos asteroid duo, which will pass 11 million kilometers from Earth in 2022.
“Astronomers will be able to compare observations from earth-based telescopes before and after the collision to determine how much the asteroid’s orbit has changed,” Tom Statler, a DART program scientist at NASA, said in a statement on the topic. This will be a key measurement that will tell us how the asteroid responds to our deflection effort.” he used his statements.
According to what are asteroids rated ‘dangerous’?
NASA classifies all meteorites passing at a distance of 5 million kilometers from the Earth and having a diameter of at least 140 meters as ‘dangerous’.
Lindley Johnson, who works for NASA’s defense mission, previously told National Geographic that there are 2 thousand 78 asteroids that are known to be a threat to the earth at the moment, stating that “there are hundreds of thousands of asteroids in SPACE, we are trying to determine what we need to follow more closely”.
