Earlier this week, NASA started a mission that is right out of a Hollywood script.
With growing concerns of damage that could be done if a large asteroid were to hit the earth, a new mission was created to possibly knock the asteroid off a destructive path.
NASA launched a new spacecraft with the mission of smashing directly into an asteroid.
Real-Life Armageddon
Most of you have probably seen the movie “Armageddon.”
Bruce Willis stars as a driller sent up to space to land on an asteroid to plant an explosive device to blow it up before it slams into our planet.
Before something like that happens in real life, NASA is already working on ways to prevent such mass destruction if we actually find ourselves in that predicament.
The answer is something called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft.
The DART lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The cost of the project is $330 million.
The plan is for the craft to hit its target on September 2022.
The target is an asteroid called Dimorphos.
This is a massive rock that measures 525 feet across.
The craft will be traveling at an estimated 15,000 mph when the collision takes place.
Amazingly, it will not actually destroy the rock but simply nudge it off course.
The rock is currently no threat to our planet, but it was chosen to give scientists a better understanding of whether we can redirect an asteroid of this size on a collision course with earth.
Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, who is a mission official, stated that if successful, the nudge “would add up to a big change in its future position, and then the asteroid and the Earth wouldn’t be on a collision course.”
Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA, added, “Although there isn’t a currently known asteroid that’s on an impact course with the earth, we do know that there is a large population of near-Earth asteroids out there.
“The key to planetary defense is finding them well before they are an impact threat.”
Do you think this mission will work?
Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
Source: Fox News
15 Responses
If NASA is behind it, it will fail!
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See 1978 cheap sci fic yarn Meteor with Sean Connery
Same concept
Wont hit till next Sept.
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WHAT happens if the nudge turns the asterorid toward our planet?
This is EXACTELY what I am thinking.
NASA, DARPA, HAARP, NOAA, CIA! all the feather of the same bird. OH! and only at a cost of $330 million. Throw a “T” in NASA and what do you get. Wake up! The only one saving this planet, is the who created.
Armageddon worked why would this not work? NASA is a whole lot smarter than Hollywood!
That kind of thin need double-times-square thinking, as that ting may come back – turdling a bit uncontrolled!
Hope this experiment works. Hope nasa takes measures to keep this sort of thing from ever happening to earth. Hope nasa gets ahead of russia and china and iran in controlling space. Those other countries would try to direct an asteroid or space rock to hit the us. Maybe the space force should take over all nasa operations.
Much better to know now rather than when dire consequence demands action.
Lot of things for a novice like me to be thinking about to answer that question. How much impact is created when a near weightless rocket going 15,000 mph crashes into a streaking asteroid that is near weightless? How big a nudge will that make and how far do you have to nudge to deflect the asteroid from earth’s gravitational pull? What if that nudge isn’t as much as it was intended to be and it sends the asteroid down to earth and it just happens to destroy the Wuhan Lab? Could the Chinese sue us for malpractice? What if you placed a bomb on that rocket that would detonate upon impact with the asteroid and blow it up in many smaller pieces? If some of those little pieces didn’t completely burn up in our atmosphere, might they cause a lot of smaller damage in many parts of our Earth. Or, if those pierce remained floating around in space, would that create a situation like we had with the Russian satellite that the Russians blew up in space and created many little bullet like obstacles flying around in space for many year to come that became threats to other satellites and space vehicles? Also, could they then sue us? Could you have a landing gear on your rocket nose that would soft land on that streaking asteroid and have your rocket engines still firing as it made contact with the asteroid to keep a little nudge going for awhile to move the 525′ diameter asteroid off course to miss earth? What if you had a rocket with a bomb aboard to blow up the asteroid and you missed contact with the asteroid- could you defuse the bomb so it didn’t cause damage to something else? What liability would the US have if we slightly nudged the rock to a different course but one that would still hit a different place on earth causing great damage? I’m sure there are many crafty lawyers who would love to tackle that one. Anyway, many exciting things to think about in space and sure hope our big thinkers have much better ideas than I do to navigate thru them all. Good luck to them because their intentions are certainly noble ones.
This should be interesting
NATION STUNNED? Hell, 99% of the nation has NO idea of the launch!