NASA is just not spending $324 million to crash a spacecraft only for enjoyable. The company is doing its job.
In 2005, Congress mandated NASA to search out 90 % of near-Earth asteroids sufficiently big to destroy a metropolis — these which are 460 ft or wider in diameter. That job was to be completed by 2020, however Congress by no means gave NASA a lot cash to carry out the duty, so it has remained greater than half unfinished, with about 15,000 extra asteroids of this dimension to find.
Because the company searches the heavens for lethal house rocks, additionally it is growing methods for what to do if it finds one that’s on a collision course with Earth.
That’s the place the DART mission is available in: It’s to display that hitting an oncoming asteroid with a projectile can nudge it into a distinct orbit.
For a harmful oncoming asteroid, that nudge could possibly be sufficient to change the trajectory from a direct hit to a close to miss.
The 1,200-pound DART spacecraft launched final November. Consider it as a refrigerator-size bullet aimed toward a goal 500 ft vast. The recoil of the influence will impart a pressure on the goal — the asteroid Dimorphos — and that offers it a push that can alter its orbit round a bigger asteroid, Didymos.
DART is testing each the expertise wanted to hit a small goal at excessive speeds — among the algorithms are based mostly on these within the steering of missiles, which additionally attempt to strike small targets at excessive speeds — in addition to the scientific understanding of what occurs to an asteroid when it’s hit. The ejection of particles from the floor of Didymos would amplify the recoil impact.