NASA’s readying its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission to crash into an asteroid to see if that’s a viable option to keep our planet safe from potentially dangerous asteroid impacts. The mission might take off later this month.
While the large majority of asteroids that are spot are harmless, a small number are categorized as “Potentially Hazardous Objects” which could impact Earth. With developments in technology, spotting such threats has become easier. But what if we find a huge rock hurtling towards our planet? The DART project is a test of a planetary defense concept that involves crashing a spacecraft into space rock.
DART to target pair of asteroids
DART will move towards a pair of asteroids: One larger body named Didymos, and one smaller body called Dimorphos. While none of them are a threat to Earth, this will be a practice run for what could happen if an asteroid poses danger to Earth. DART will attempt to change the trajectory of Dimophos.
“The DART spacecraft, the main body of it is about 100 times smaller than Dimorphos, the asteroid that it’s targeting. So you can see this isn’t going to destroy the asteroid,” explained Nancy Chabot, DART coordination lead at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). “It’s just going to give it a small nudge. It’s actually going to deflect its path around the larger asteroid. So we’re demonstrating asteroid deflection in this double asteroid system.”
SmartNav tech to navigate the spacecraft
The DART spacecraft will navigate itself with the help of SmartNav, which uses computational algorithms to locate the Dimorphos asteroid and move in its direction. “Never in my life would I have thought I would take a couple hundred million dollar spacecraft and crash it into an asteroid,” said Michelle Chen, leader of the SmartNav team at APL, with a laugh.
Recently, NASA warned that an asteroid the size of the Eiffel Tower is moving towards Earth in December. However, there’s no reason to worry, as NASA’s asteroid tracker says that “potentially hazardous” space rock will only pass within 2.4 million miles of our planet on December 11.
