On September 26, the spacecraft from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will intentionally collide with an asteroid located not far from Earth to alter its trajectory.
The spacecraft is part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) program, launched from California in November 2021, and is rapidly approaching its target, a asteroid named Dimorphos, according to AFP.
The collision will occur head-on with the asteroid at a speed of approximately 23,000 km/h.
Illustration of the DART spacecraft colliding with the Dimorphos asteroid. (Photo: NASA).
The Dimorphos asteroid, along with its larger counterpart Didymos, which it orbits, poses no threat to Earth.
However, this impact test is considered crucial by NASA to assess the capability to prevent celestial objects from potentially devastating life on Earth in the future.
“This is a groundbreaking moment, not just for the agency (NASA), but in space history and human history,” said Lindley Johnson, a NASA Earth defense official, during a press conference on September 22.
If all goes according to plan, the collision between the spacecraft and the 160-meter-long asteroid will take place at 7:14 PM Eastern Time (North America). The event can be monitored via NASA’s live broadcast.
By colliding with Dimorphos, NASA hopes to slow down its speed and change its orbit, reducing its rotation time around Didymos by 10 minutes.
NASA further stated that the collision is intended solely to redirect the asteroid, not to break it apart, and will not pose any threat to Earth.
A man working at the operations center of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) program. (Photo: AFP).
This experiment will demonstrate what was previously only seen in science fiction films like “Armageddon” and “Don’t Look Up” becoming a reality.
As the autonomous spacecraft approaches its target in the final stages of its mission like a guided missile, its primary camera system, known as DRACO, will begin to capture the first images of Dimorphos.
“It will start as a small bright spot and then eventually it will zoom in and fill the entire field of view,” said Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “The images from DRACO, I want to emphasize, will be quite spectacular.”
“These images will continue to zoom in until nothing is visible,” the scientist added.
Minutes later, a toaster-sized satellite named LICIACube, which detached from DART weeks earlier, will pass near the impact site to capture images of the collision.
The images from LICIACube will be sent back in the following weeks and months.
In conjunction with this event, a series of telescopes, both on Earth and in space—including the James Webb Telescope—will be able to observe a bright dust cloud.
Ultimately, the full picture after the event will be revealed when a second spacecraft, Hera, arrives to survey, assess, and analyze the effectiveness of the impact.
So far, very few of the billions of asteroids and comets in the Solar System are considered capable of threatening Earth. According to scientists, there are no asteroids with such potential within the next 100 years.
However, “I assure you that if given enough time, there will still be a threatening object,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s chief scientist.
Historically, the Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago plunged the world into a prolonged winter, leading to the mass extinction of dinosaurs along with 75% of species.
An asteroid the size of Dimorphos would only cause localized impacts, such as devastating a city, although with force greater than any nuclear bomb in history.
