If an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, can humanity be saved not with a bang, but with a nudge? NASA is poised to find out with a first-of-its-kind mission.
If an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, can humanity be saved not with a bang, but with a nudge?by intentionally crashing a spacecraft into it. The mission, set to launch Wednesday, offers a rare, real-world chance to test a planetary defense strategy that could protect Earth from a potentially catastrophic collision in the future., short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is scheduled to launch Wednesday at 1:21 a.m. ET from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos pose a threat to the planet, according to NASA, but the system is a"perfect testing ground" for whether crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid can effectively change its motion in space.at a speed of around 15,000 mph.
"This isn't going to destroy the asteroid — it's just going to give it a small nudge," she said earlier this month in a news briefing."It's actually going to deflect its path around the larger asteroid, so we're demonstrating asteroid deflection in this double asteroid system." No known asteroid larger than 450 feet has a significant chance of smashing into the planet over the next 100 years, according to NASA, but the agency said only a fraction of smaller near-Earth objects have been found so far.
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