Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Next week, the NASA spacecraft will crash into an asteroid. The Dart mission was launched 10 months ago and is headed for Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Didymos.
The collision will occur Monday (9/26/2022) at 7:14 PM ET or 6:14 AM WIB the next day. NASA will provide a live broadcast starting at 5:30 PM ET (4:30 PM ET on Tuesday, September 27, 2022), quoted by CNN International, Monday (9/19/2022).
NASA officials said a collision with the asteroid would have no impact on Earth. But it’s the perfect target for kinetic impact tests, which may be needed when an asteroid is on a collision course with the planet.
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“For the first time, we will change the orbits of celestial bodies in the universe in a measurable way,” said Robert Braun, head of space exploration at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Near-Earth objects or near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets that have a distance of 48.3 million kilometers from Earth. NASA and other space organizations focus on being able to detect threats to objects that can cause severe damage.
Meanwhile, Didymos was discovered by astronomers more than two decades ago. The name means twin in Greek, referring to the asteroids that form a binary system with smaller asteroids.
Didymos is nearly half a mile or about 0.8 kilometers in size. The Dimorphos is 525 feet (160 meters) in diameter.
On the day of the collision, the images taken by DRACO (Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical) will present Dimorphos for the first time. As well as being used to guide the spaceship to meet the little moon.
Planetary scientist and head of DART coordination at the Applied Physics Laboratory, Nancy Chabot, said the images would be transmitted to Earth at a rate of one per second.
Meanwhile, the plane will accelerate to 15,000 miles per hour or 24,140 kilometers per hour when it collides with Dimorphos.
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(npb / roy)
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