NASA's DART Spacecraft to Crash Into Asteroid Tonight in Planetary Defense Test

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

An uncrewed spacecraft is on track to smash into and deflect a distant asteroid on Monday, the dramatic climax of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission to test whether the technique could one day be used to protect Earth.

“For the first time ever, we will measurably change the orbit of a celestial body in the universe,” said Bobby Braun, head of the space exploration sector at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. The research center built the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission spacecraft and is responsible for its operation at the direction of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

The 1,300-pound DART spacecraft will be traveling at more than 14,000 miles an hour when it hits the asteroid Dimorphos, a much more massive, 525-foot-wide space rock that orbits a larger one known as Didymos. The asteroid pair—what astronomers call a binary asteroid—will be about 7 million miles from Earth at the time of impact and poses no threat to our planet.

“Regardless of what the DART spacecraft does, there’s a zero percent chance that this asteroid will come towards the Earth,” Dr. Braun said of Dimorphos at a recent press briefing.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/nasa-s-dart-spacecraft-to-crash-into-asteroid-tonight-in-planetary-defense-test/ar-AA12fc3Y

[Whiskeytide]

1. This really sounds like the opening scene from ...

… a sci-fi disaster movie. I’m just saying.

[odins folly]

3. I often wonder

If these scientists have ever watch any popular movies, this is exactly the plot driver for both Armageddon and Deep Impact.

Same with folks working on AI, what could possibly go wrong.......

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Well, yes, they have, and that's exactly the point - we need to find out how to deflect asteroids

or comets. The plot in both of those is that an asteroid/comet is already on a collision course, and they decide to user nuclear weapons to blow it up. In Armageddon, this succeeds, and nothing big hits Earth; in Deep Impact, fragments do (more likely in real life).

In this case, the asteroid is not on course for the Earth, not can any foreseeable effect of the collision put it on course. But they'll get an idea how the collision affects it (this would depend, I think, one how much it's an elastic, and how much a plastic, collision - think of throwing a pool ball to knock another pool ball off course (a very elastic collision), or throwing a ball to knock a lump of jello off course (a rather plastic collision) - which would be why experimenting is important).

To show that NASA does watch movies, see

https://www.nasa.gov/mediacast/jpl/season-two-episode-4-deflecting-disaster

and not just the people who make their podcasts - both movies are mentioned in their 407 page book

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/a_history_of_near-earth_object_research_tagged.pdf

They even named an earlier test "Deep Impact".

[Whiskeytide]

10. The law of unintended consequences is ...

… a fickle little asshole, though. So they knock asteroid Jello off course. In 3 years, somewhere in deep space, it now impacts asteroid Stallone and knocks it off course, which in turn now rams asteroid Willis in the Centauri nebula, which heads straight for asteroid Тяцмp, hits it in the ass on a corner in Winslow AZ and, of course, puts in on a collision course for Earth.

Our great, great grandchildren are all screwed.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. The thing is, do you think they can do mathematics?

Or do you think they just get rockets up there without understanding how they work, and how gravity and the laws of physics work?

The asteroid they have targeted orbits another, larger asteroid. That means they can detect the tiny deviation in its course that this probe hit will have made, by measuring the change in orbit around the larger asteroid - which will continue on its way around the Sun, basically unaffected, keeping the smaller asteroid with it (in an orbit that may change its period by about 1.4%):

DART’s head-on impact with Dimorphos is expected to cause an estimated speed change of around 0.4 millimeters per second — shifting the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos and leading to a larger orbital shift of both asteroids over time. In fact, DART’s collision with Dimorphos is expected to shorten its orbital period around Didymos, currently 11.92 hours, by approximately 10 minutes.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2022/09/dart-impact/

So this will slightly rearrange the pair of asteroids relative to each other, but the change in their joint orbit around the Sun, and relative to Earth, won't be measurable.

[Whiskeytide]

12. I was actually just making a joke. The space program ...

… is an amazing human achievement. They do math quite well. That said, we are indeed fortunate that the program’s engineers and analysts never make errors in calculation or design, never succumb to petty avarice or hubris, and don’t have to function under limitations imposed by political leadership. And thank god we didn’t let the military get involved.

[LeftInTX]

8. Don't Looks Up is sci-fi parody about a comet that is going to hit earth

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/dont-look-up-could-a-comet-destroy-the-earth

And yes, they try to break it up with bad results

[intrepidity]

2. 7:14 p.m. ET on Monday

NASA will live-stream the event using imagery from a camera aboard the spacecraft. The stream starts about an hour and 15 minutes before the impact, which is expected to come at 7:14 p.m. ET on Monday.

[NQAS]

4. One small change might be needed in the press release

“…poses no threat to our planet.”

To be a a tad more accurate, I would add, that we know of.

[VGNonly]

6. What could go wrong...?

[link:

|

[Xavier Breath]

7. "...there's a zero percent chance that this asteroid will come towards the Earth."

Famous last words much?

[LeftInTX]

9. Cool..hopefully it will be worth watching...sounds like fun!