ILLUSTRATION. A NASA mission similar to the film Armageddon will launch in November.
Source: TechCrunch | Editor: Arif Budianto
KONTAN.CO.ID – Movie-like NASA missions Armageddon launching soon in November 2021. The mission titled DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) will save Earth from the threat of an approaching asteroid.
Have you ever watched a movie Armageddon which first aired in 1998? This film tells the story of NASA’s mission to send astronauts to break up a giant asteroid so it doesn’t collide with Earth.
As a matter of fact, the NASA mission will launch next month. The mission, under the command of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, involves sending satellites to a pair of asteroids relatively close to Earth.
The asteroids, known as Didymos and Moonlet, have a diameter of 780 meters and 160 meters, respectively.
Slightly different from the movie Armageddon which breaks up asteroids by drilling and planting nuclear bombs, the DART mission simply changes the asteroid’s trajectory.
Of course, changing the asteroid’s trajectory requires significant and predictable means. One way to change the asteroid’s trajectory is to hit it at nearly 15,000 miles per hour, as quoted Techcrunch.
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The launched craft will hit the Moonlet, thereby changing the asteroid’s velocity by a fraction of a percent. But make no mistake, it will affect the orbit.
The companion spacecraft, called the Light Italian CubeSat for Imagine Asteroids or LICIACube, got its final touches last week. The good news, this spacecraft will be ready to launch shortly before the mission takes place.
The spacecraft will also try to fly at the time of impact and capture “blobs resulting from ejecta and possibly newly formed impact craters”.
If you’re interested in this NASA mission, the maiden launch of DART will take place November 23, 2021. DART will launch from Vandenberg in Southern California at 10:20 p.m. local time aboard the SpaceX Falcon9.
