For years the question has been raised about whether human beings could be able to change the trajectory of an asteroid if necessary. NASA hopes to answer this question in the coming months.
The space agency plans to impact a space probe against the asteroid “Dimorphos” between the 26 September and October 1. The test seeks to find out if an event like this could destroy or fragment the asteroid or if, on the contrary, it would have no effect on it other than slightly changing its trajectory.
All this will be possible thanks to the spacecraft spacecraft DART which was launched in November of last year and that during all these months has traveled on a collision course with the meteorite.
NASA calculates that at the moment of impact the ship will be traveling at a speed of approximately 4 miles per second and that the energy that will be released at the moment of impact will be equivalent to 6,613 pounds of TNT. Scientists also hope to obtain images of the collision thanks to a secondary ship that a few days after the impact will separate from the main ship. This will be in charge of taking pictures and sending them to Earth so that they can be thoroughly analyzed by experts.
The space agency adds that although it is important to know the data that will throw this experiment, there is no danger that the Earth will be hit by an asteroid, at least, during the next 100 years.
These projections are possible thanks to the constant space monitors carried out by NASA to prevent possible large meteorites from impacting our planet.
However, the potential asteroids that Nasa refers to are those that could be capable of destroying life on earth, since it is relatively common for small asteroids to periodically enter our atmosphere. As a consequence of their small mass, these tend to burn before they can hit the ground.
While those large enough to do so, most of the time they end up in the ocean.
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