Is NASA planning to stop an asteroid ?

Like our dinosaur friends could not stop the ultimate fate, their extinction due to the impact of an asteroid on earth, we can. With the help of DART.

What is DART?

DART is Double Asteroid Redirection Test. I hope you understood by name what it means, Right?

Just joking, let me explain to you WHAT and WHY we need DART. We all know about how an impact on an asteroid nearly 66 Million years ago on earth nearly wiped all the living life on earth (Approx. 96% of living life went extinct). We have seen a thousand movies and a billion animated videos of those. And it always makes us think what can we do if something like this ever happens again, whats our chances of survival?

This brings me to the point of WHAT is DART, in simple words asteroids are always monitored, as to predict when shall one of them shall hit earth which might result in the extinction of the Human race, or are monitored for many scientific purposes as well, as I mentioned in my asteroid mining Blog, DO CHECK IT OUT (small plug).

So what DART does is whenever a particular asteroid is marked as a potential threat to earth, we shall study its speed and the time of impact and will launch a DART probe which shall contain a satellite whose sole purpose is to hit the asteroid at a particular speed.

Now the question arises how a small satellite weighing a maximum of a few Kg or a maximum of a Ton will stop or destroy a humungous asteroid, a asteroid cannot be even destroyed with the most powerful nukes available on our planet right at this point in time, the answer is, the purpose is not to destroy or annihilate the asteroid but to cause a slight change in the orbit of it. A specific threshold speed will be calculated at which the satellite needs to hit the asteroid to cause a slight change in its orbit and then the satellite with be launched along with the equipments required to achieve the threshold speed .

Now you’d say this is like hitting a giant elephant with a pebble, it will not cause any harm to the elephant, the analogy is right, but the elephant is not in space where there is vacuum everywhere and is neither moving in an orbit, even the slightest change is the orbit will cause a major change in the orbital path of a asteroid over a period of time which means that the orbit of the asteroid will change eventually and then the asteroid will never hit the earth and will never cause the extinction of human just like our friend's dinosaurs did (jokes)

DART is NASA’s first planetary defense system to avoid any asteroid to hit the earth. The first DART satellite was launched on 24th NOV 2021 with the help of SpaceX designed rocket FALCON 9. This test is conducted on the asteroid Dimorphos and the satellite is projected to hit the asteriod Sept 26 to Oct 1, 2022. And if things go as planed then that day will be marked one of the most significant day in human history,

This is just in the testing phase and the results from the same shall provide us details as to whether the technique is reliable and safe to be used in future or not, and what more changes needs to be incorporated to improve the system.

So I hope you were able to understand the DART mission by NASA. If you enjoyed this blog do share it with your friends, family and other contacts. DO give it a like and comment your thoughts.