WASHINGTON (Parliament Politics Magazine) – The ability of NASA to protect Earth from an apocalyptic scenario was put to the test on Monday when a multimillion dollar spacecraft slammed head-on with an asteroid as big as a football stadium.
6.8 million miles from Earth, NASA’s craft successfully collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. The Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission was humanity’s first attempt to move another celestial body. Its objective was to determine whether it was possible to successfully divert a massive asteroid that was speeding toward Earth.
At 7.14 p.m. EDT, the spacecraft struck the asteroid at 15,000 mph. Cheers broke out in the mission control room as live-streamed video showed the asteroid’s debris-strewn surface coming into focus prior to the spacecraft’s impact. Scientists from NASA and Johns Hopkins University hugged after learning that Dart successfully struck Dimorphos.
The director of NASA’s planetary science division, Lori Glaze, declared it to be the beginning of a “new era of humanity” shortly after impact.
Glaze said it was an era where humankind had the capability to protect itself from something like a dangerous hazardous asteroid collision. “What an amazing thing. We’ve never had that capability before,” she exclaimed.
Samson Reony, the mission commentator for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, was equally ecstatic with the “game changing” accomplishment. It creates a magnificent moment, he said, when science, engineering, and a grand purpose, planetary defence, come together.
It will be tested to see if altering a spacecraft’s trajectory by purposefully slamming it into an asteroid is feasible. In Morgan Freeman’s fictional 1998 planetary disaster film Deep Impact, a similar technique utilising a nuclear missile instead of an unmanned spacecraft failed at a crucial point in the movie.Â
Dart scientists declared the mission a success at a post-mission press briefing, but they expressed caution, saying it will be around two months before they can determine whether the spacecraft was successful in changing Dimorphos’s course.
They praised Monday as the ideal result of the planetary defence test’s initial phase. According to Elena Adams, the Dart deputy programme manager, the Dart hit at the asteroid was essentially a bullseye.
They were going to hit and they waited with bated breath. She was surprised no one passed out.Â
She reported that the craft had successfully landed 17 metres away from its target. It was pretty much a bullseye. She believes the first planetary defence test was successful as far as they could tell, and they applaud that.Â
Scientists will spend the coming weeks tracking the asteroid’s speed and motions as well as performing calculations to determine whether the hit was powerful enough to move the asteroid. Adams nevertheless stated, “Earthlings should sleep better, and I definitely will.”
