WASHINGTON DC (RIAUPOS.CO) – NASA will conduct a historical test. Their spaceship is about to crash into an asteroid. Exactly after midnight, Monday (26/9) today.
The collision was intentional as part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. The goal is to see if the kinetic impact of such a collision could help deflect an asteroid that threatens Earth.
The asteroid that will be hit is called Dimorphos. It is 163 meters wide. The collision between Dimorphos and a NASA plane worth $ 330 million (4.9 trillion rupees) will occur approximately 11 million kilometers above the Indian Ocean. With a speed of almost 7 kilometers per second, the spaceship weighing half a ton will surely be destroyed.
Dimorphos actually poses no threat to Earth. This is only the first experiment and mission to examine the possible deflection of the asteroid if it is about to collide with Earth. Researchers think that if the collision is in the right position it can prevent a major catastrophe and save humanity from extinction.
“This is a very complicated game of cosmic billiards. What we want to do is use as much energy as possible from Dart to move the asteroid,” said Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, astronomer and member of the NASA Dart investigative team at Queen’s University. of Belfast.
About 10 days before the collision occurred, a device called LuciaCube detached itself from DART. The instrument will send images to Earth about the seconds of the collision and after. With more and more telescopes observing motion in the sky, scientists are hoping to see if there is a potentially life-threatening asteroid on Earth.
Astronomer and member of the science team of the Dart mission at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Colin Snodgrass insists that the mission is completely harmless. The asteroid will not change course towards Earth. “We’re just changing his he orbit around the larger asteroid, we’re not changing his he orbit around the sun. It’s not coming to Earth,” he said.(sha / bay / jpg)
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