Sept. 26 (UPI) — NASA’s double asteroid redirection test, also known as DART, collided with an asteroid Monday night in its first planetary defense test that could protect Earth from long-term threats.
“We are showing that planetary defense is a global enterprise and that it is completely imaginable to save our planet,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told those gathered after the defense test was successful.
“To see it so magnificently concluded today is an incredible feeling. “
NASA scientists told reporters they were about 17 meters from the center of their precise target because the asteroid wasn’t illuminated from all sides, but otherwise, everything went exactly as planned.
NASA scientists said they were “precisely pinned” to their target about 20 minutes before taking effect, a milestone that drew loud applause inside the lab around 6:50 p. m.
We’re maneuvering toward him and everything looks good,” Adams told reporters. “We ran two fires and everything is on track. “
“We’re starting to see Dimorphos for the first time,” Adams said. “We are preparing for the transition. We are in a position to do so. “
Just before impact, LICIACube was launched, which recorded the last moments of the spacecraft before crashing. He sent the photographs and knowledge to Earth. NASA scientists said those photographs will be available in the coming days.
We will know in a few months if DART’s goal of diverting Dimorphos from its trajectory has been achieved.
“So, of course, ground-based observatories are already taking data right now. . . but what we’re likely to see in the coming months, we’ll get confirmation of the precise era update that we’re doing,” Adams said.
“So it may not be tomorrow. I am sorry. But we may see photographs of LICIACube sets in a day or two. “
According to scientists, the DART project will provide valuable insights to NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which controlled the project. Neither Didymos nor Dimorphos posed a risk to Earth, but the same maneuver can be used to deflect other asteroids. to risk the planet.
Once the spacecraft reaches its target, it is expected to change the moon’s orbit around the asteroid, which will be measured through ground-based telescopes, according to Andy Cheng, head of DART’s research team.
An elbow in the path of an asteroid can only cause a change of millimeters per second, which is very fast, but could, over a long enough period of time, force Earth to lose the planet completely.
Dimorphos has been estimated to be about 560 feet in diameter, roughly that of the Washington Monument.
“Dimorphos is a tiny asteroid,” Tom Statler, NASA’s project program scientist, said at an earlier press conference.
“We’ve never noticed it closely. We don’t know what it looks like. We don’t know what shape it takes. And that’s just one of the things that leads to DART’s technical challenges,” Statler said Monday. “Hitting an asteroid is a complicated thing. “
DART unveiled on Nov. 23, for its $330 million mission, atop a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate scientific administrator, DART is the first of many planned planetary defense missions.
Dr. Kelly Fast, program scientist in NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said there are more than 27,500 known near-Earth asteroids, none of which pose a risk to the planet, there are many more that have yet to be detected.
“The giant subset that can cause damage that Earth’s environment doesn’t protect us from, this giant population, we probably only discovered about 40 percent,” he said. “So we keep looking. “