In order to better protect the earth from dangers from space in the future, the consequences of the collision are now being examined in detail.
It sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie, but it is a NASA mission: On Tuesday night – at 1.14 a.m. German time – a probe from the US space agency is to crash directly and intentionally into an asteroid for the first time, thereby changing its trajectory. According to NASA, nothing less than the “future security of the earth” is at stake in the Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission.
“Dart is the first mission that tries to use a direct experiment to push a dangerous object out of the way,” says NASA Science Director Thomas Zurbuchen. “At this point I can say: The team is ready. The ground control systems are ready and the spacecraft is intact and on track for impact,” project manager Edward Reynolds said at a press conference a few days ago.
All of this is strongly reminiscent of Hollywood films such as “Armageddon – The Last Judgment”, in which in 1998 stars such as Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck destroyed an asteroid that was heading straight for earth in a very short time using a complicated and dangerous maneuver. But: NASA’s mission, which costs around 330 million dollars, is unmanned and the target asteroid Dimorphos is not racing towards Earth either, but according to NASA calculations it currently poses no danger. It is a first cautious attempt to see if it is possible could be to change the trajectory of an asteroid in this way. Nasa hopes to gain insights into how the earth could be protected from approaching asteroids.
The Space Agency has been dealing with this for many years. An asteroid impact around 66 million years ago, for example, is considered by scientists to be the leading theory as to why the dinosaurs became extinct. Scientists don’t currently know of any asteroid that could be heading straight for Earth any time soon – but researchers have identified around 27,000 asteroids near our planet, around 10,000 of them with a diameter of more than 140 meters.
Launched in November from the US state of California using a Falcon 9 rocket, the Dart probe – a cube-shaped missile weighing around 610 kilograms with an edge length of almost two meters – has been on its way to its target for around ten months. “Asteroid Dimorphos: We’ll get you,” Nasa tweeted shortly after launch. According to NASA, the probe will only be able to focus on Dimorphos with its camera about an hour and a half before the impact at a speed of 6.6 kilometers per second. Directing the flying object precisely into the asteroid is “incredibly challenging,” says NASA manager Evan Smith. About 160 meters in diameter, Dimorphos is a type of moon orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. The mission is designed in such a way that both asteroids should not pose any danger even after the impact of the probe, which only has one camera on board.
After the impact, Dimorphos’ approximately 12-hour orbit is expected to be reduced by at least 73 seconds and possibly up to 10 minutes. Only then does the real work begin for the scientists: investigating what exactly happened before, during and after the impact – and what that could mean for protecting the earth. The impact of two mini-satellites is to be observed. In 2024, the Esa mission Hera is to start for even more detailed investigation.
Dart is a “test mission,” emphasizes Nasa manager Andrea Riley. “Even if we don’t score, we’ll still be able to collect a lot of data. That’s why we’re testing. We want to do it now and not when there’s a real problem.”