The science fiction plan is called DART and involves, like in a video game, ditching a spacecraft vs. asteroid. NASA is leading it.
NASA seems particularly concerned about the consequences of an asteroid impact with Earth. It is easy to imagine why: what for dinosaurs marked the extinction, in the case of humans we would like to avoid it instead: here is the development of a space shield for the hijacking of meteorites and the use of a kind of laser that, as in the classic video game Asteroids, shoots the meteors that could otherwise impact on our planet with devastating consequences.
NASA’s plan to avert the impact of a meteorite
The last of this series of experiments is a curious galactic crash test that the American space agency would like to conduct through a spacecraft: in particular, the science fiction plan is called Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). It should kick off in the next few months and last a year before the meteor-target is within range of NASA’s spacecraft.
The target is called Dimorphos. It is a stage-sized asteroid orbiting a second asteroid (hence the “double asteroid” in the mission name) much larger than the first, called Didymus. Earth scientists would like, to be precise, to hit Dimorphos at a speed of 6.5 kilometers per second. DART, which is also the name of the spacecraft, is about the size of a car and weighs a third of a ton. The impact is expected to alter Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymus. Not by much, but still by enough to get significant results.
What does the EMA have to do with NASA’s galactic crash test
Collecting data on the outcome of the mission will be the task of Hera, a mission, this time by the EMA, the European space agency, scheduled five years after the crash. It is interesting to note that astronomers program over a very long time the various stages of their experiments, which often will never find a concrete application in the course of our lives, yet represent necessary steps to develop – as in this case – defense weapons capable of averting the extinction of mankind.
“We are doing this to have the ability to prevent a truly catastrophic natural disaster,” said Tom Statler, a scientist of the DART program at NASA headquarters in Washington.
Giuseppe Giordano