News from NASA
Chris Loustaunau, Editor-in-Chief
NASA launched the DART spacecraft on September 26 2020 which successfully impacted the asteroid Dimorphous on October 4th. NASA’s plan was to redirect an asteroid far in space.
NASA’s attempt to alter the orbit of the asteroid will see me for the first time in history, NASA will crash a spacecraft into the asteroid on September 26th. The mission will be known as the devil asteroid redirection test or start and will take place on the asteroid that poses no threat to our planet. Rather than ideal Target for NASA to test their very important elements of their planetary defense plan.
The vast majority of asteroids and comets are not dangerous and never will be. Comets and asteroids are considered potentially hazardous objects if they are around 100 to 165 ft in diameter or larger.
NASA’s Center for near-earth object studies monitors all known near-earth objects to assess the impact or wrist they may pose. Any relativity close to Earth is reported on the asteroid watch dashboard as of clear and there are no asteroids posing a threat to Earth however scientists continue scanning the skies for unknown asteroids. NASA is actively researching and planning ways to prevent any catastrophic asteroids that might hit the planet. And the dart mission was the first successful test of such a – In this case if it’s possible to remotely divert an asteroid from its predicted trajectory by slamming into it with a spacecraft the dart spacecraft designed to collide head-on with the asteroid to alter its orbit.
The asteroid has a mass of about 11 billion pounds and the dark spacecraft is light. It Weighs just around 1210 lb at the time of impact, so how can such a light spacecraft even remotely affect the orbit of the asteroid.
The dart uses a law or just called a kinetic impactor. How it works is that it will transfer momentum and kinetic energy to the asteroid upon impact to redirect the asteroid’s return to orbit. scientists can now make predictions of all of these effects thanks to the principles of Newton’s laws of motion.
After the Dart impacts the asteroid, scientists at Nasa will be observing it from Earth to see how far it passes away from their original trajectory.
The biggest challenge of the third mission is navigating a small aircraft to a head-on collision with smaller asteroids millions of miles away from the planet the dart is propelled by particles of xenon Which push energy by a flexible solar panel that is rolled up for lunch and unrolled in space to provide energy from the Sun
NASA hopes to use this information for future aircraft missions and spacecraft missions, to see the effects of moving an asteroid off of its original trajectory, in case of any similar events that might occur near our solar system.
