Dart Will Show Tuesday How To Deflect Asteroids & More Latest News Here

If an asteroid came to Earth, could we deflect it? That’s what the Dart probe will try to demonstrate this Tuesday by crashing into one. Astrophysicist Josep Maria Trigo-Rodríguez, part of the mission’s science team, tells the crux of the matter.

Dart is a “historic mission designed to show us how to deflect asteroids using relatively simple techniques, and is relevant to asteroids we predict could be dangerous in relatively quick time,” the House Institute study The staff said the science of CSIC and the Catalan Housing Institute (IEEC).

The NASA/Johns Hopkins Laboratory Binary Asteroid Redirection Check (DART) mission is an experiment in the size of actual asteroids.

It aims to examine the strategy of a kinetic impactor in a pioneering way, without the explosive cost, of launching it onto an asteroid with a kamikaze-style probe and trying to barely alter its orbit. Dart will launch at 6.6 kilometers per second towards the asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits another asteroid called Didymos, forming a binary star system with it.

The Didymos system consists of two asteroids, which is why it is of higher scientific curiosity and has been assessed as potentially harmful. Didymos has a diameter of approximately 780 meters and revolves around Dimorphos, the mission’s target, which is approximately 160 meters in diameter. Measurements we may encounter in the future.

“It is impossible to predict 10, 100 or 200 years into the future, but it is clear that in the past, sooner or later, we will find asteroids tens of meters in diameter during direct collisions,” explained the scientists. In fact, on June 30, 1908, a tree with a diameter of only about 50 meters wreaked havoc on Tunguska (Russia), destroying more than 2,150 square kilometers of Siberian taiga – within a few hours it was Did not land in St. Petersburg -, constantly changing. We have a dangerous imagination and foresight about asteroids.

When asked if the binary asteroid system is a threat to Earth, or if Dart’s impressions are, Trigo-Rodríguez noted that it would not be in any way. “While the system has been assessed as potentially harmful, none currently pose a threat.”

“As for the impression, in the extreme hypothetical scenario of Dimorphos being interrupted into multiple projects, they would continue to orbit Didymos and the huge supplies wouldn’t be thrown out of orbit of the main asteroid,” he factors out.

Everything happens at a distance of 11 million kilometers from Earth, so the scientist assures that “this experiment is not dangerous to humans in any way, quite the contrary.”

The Dart probe, which weighs 550 kilograms, “when it collides with the ground of Dimorphos, Dart will excavate a crater that would otherwise eject rock and mud onto the projectile,” explains Josep María Trigo-Rodríguez road. Relying on its precision, the higher the kinetic energy, the higher the impression, the more fragmented the supply, the higher the switch of kinetic energy seconds, the more environmentally friendly the deflection of the asteroid may be.