Watching asteroids; possible damage (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, March 22, 2017, 17:04 (2804 days ago) @ dhw

We are planning to attack asteroids. We have the smarts to do it, just like God planned:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/nasa-esa-aim-to-ram-asteroid?utm_source=Today+in+Cosmo...

"But instead of trying to blow up such a threat, as in the 1998 science fiction movie Armageddon, the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission intends to prove that an asteroid can be shifted by hitting it with a fast-moving spacecraft launched from Earth.

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"The mission uses two spacecraft, one to be launched by ESA in 2020, the other by NASA in 2021.

"The ESA spacecraft, called AIM (for Asteroid Impact Mission) will rendezvous with the selected asteroid and go into orbit around it in early 2022.

"The NASA spacecraft, called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) will be timed to hit the rock a few months later, at a speed of six kilometres per second, while the AIM spacecraft and earthbound telescopes watch.

"The target is a moonlet of 65803 Didymos, a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 1996. At the time of impact it will be about 11 million kilometres away.

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"One of the goals of the mission is to test whether it is possible to hit such a small, distant object with a spacecraft moving at such a high speed. But it’s also important, Cheng says, to see how the asteroid responds to the impact.

"That’s because hitting an asteroid with a spacecraft isn’t like hitting a billiard ball with the cue ball.

"'When we have a high-speed impact on an asteroid, you create a crater,” Cheng says. “You blow pieces back in the direction you came from.”

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"This is the first time, Cheng says, that scientists will be able to test their models by looking at a crater on an asteroid, knowing exactly what hit it and how fast it was moving. Michel adds that the target moonlet will also be the smallest asteroid ever to be visited by a spacecraft.

“'This is important for science and for companies interested in asteroid mining because so far we don’t have any data regarding what we will find on the surface of such a small body,” he says.

“'Each time we discover a new world we have surprises,” he adds. “The main driver [of this mission] is planetary defence, but it has a lot of scientific implications.'”

Comment: Humans are bright enough to protect ourselves against the dangers of the universe.