DART
1st Test Mission To Defend The Earth
NASA's DART (Double Asteroid
Redirection Test) the world's first full-scale mission to test technology for
defending Earth against potential asteroid aur comment hazards, launched
Wednesday on a spaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandentberg
Space Force Base in California. It's goal is to slightly change the asteroid's
motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.
In late September or
early October of 2022, the 1210-pound (550 kg) DART spacecraft will slam into a
small asteroid named Dimorphous, changing the space rocks orbit around its
larger companion, Didymos. Astronomers will quantify that change causing the
effectiveness of the "Kinetic impact" method of asteroid deflection -
a strategy humanity might need to employ in the future against a rock that
lines Earth up in its crosshairs.
Dimorphous does not
pose any threat to earth and the mission is only to test the new technology.
"Carrying out a real-world test on an asteroid with mostly unknown
physical properties is a necessary next step to evaluate current models and
advance them further to address potentially hazardous asteroids in the
future." NASA says currently there are over 25,000 Near Earth objects and
no known asteroid larger than 140m in size has a significant chance of hitting
Earth for the next 100 years.
As things stand now,
Outer Space Treaty, the cornerstone set of international space laws signed in
the 1960s, prohibits replacement or use of nuclear weapons in space. The use of
nuclear-tipped spacecraft against a killer asteroid would, therefore amount to
a treaty violation. But should such a contingency arise, the UN Security
Council can be expected to find a way around it.
If the DART is
successful, NASA and other space agencies could in future have the option of
using spacecraft to deflect an asteroid off-course - averting a potentially
catastrophic collision with earth.
Write a public review