Photo: Pat Rawlings / Getty Images
This Wednesday NASA’s DART successfully took off from California aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 with a single objective: to hit high speed against an asteroid to change its orbit , in order to determine if similar maneuvers can be performed in the future should a giant asteroid head toward Earth in sometime.
However, the North American space agency has stressed at all times that there is no threat to the planet for up to 100 years .
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is planned hitting Didymos, an asteroid about the size of a soccer field (160 diameter meters) by the end of 2022. The ship is smaller than a conventional vehicle and has two solar panels to supply energy during the trip .
The asteroid in question does not represent and will not represent a danger to Earth according to NASA. The objective of the mission is to evaluate how much the orbit of a space rock can be modified if a spacecraft collides with it at high speed, since the DART will impact the celestial body to almost 80, 000 kilometers per hour to modify its trajectory .
“The collision will change the speed of the small moon in its orbit around the main body by a fraction of one percent, which will serve to change its orbital period in several minutes, enough to be observed and measured with telescopes on Earth “, said NASA in an official statement.
The DART will not travel alone, it will be accompanied by DRACO (Didymos Reconnaissance & Asteroid Camera for OpNav) a telescope that will not hit the asteroid, but will capture images of the collision to be sent to Earth and studied in its time by scientists.
If the mission, it cost more than $ 300 million dollars, succeeds will mean that Earth successfully developed its first planetary defense system in case of cosmic threats . An unprecedented milestone in the history of mankind.
The data collected by NASA about the impact will be shared with the Hera mission, of the European Space Agency, which will have the objective of analyzing the asteroids in question more closely and study the craters that DART will have left by fall of next year .
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