NASA, which is working on asteroid collisions, has launched the DART mission to be performed with the Falcon 9 rocket. Explaining that the mission is to neutralize future asteroid hazards, officials will experiment with the artificial satellite Dimorphos asteroid set.
Worried that a large asteroid will hit our planet in the future, scientists started a study to discover asteroids around the Earth at the congress held in the USA in 2005. Stating that about 40 percent of asteroids larger than 140 meters have been detected, the officials underlined that they continue to work.
NASA will perform DART mission with Falcon 9 rocket
NASA describes the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft as part of a simple and low-cost planetary defense strategy. In addition, DART is NASA’s first mission to perform asteroid deflection by a kinetic impactor.
Falcon 9 rocket, taking off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, will target a pair of asteroids. Falcon 9, which will collide with Didymos with a diameter of 780 meters and Dimorphos with a diameter of 160 meters, cost NASA 325 million dollars.
Stating that asteroids the size of Dimorphos are dangerous, the authorities announced that a possible collision could result in the loss of tens of thousands of people’s lives. Officials who made a statement on the subject stated that asteroids larger than 300 meters in diameter could cause continent-wide destruction.
Announcing that it will hit Dimorphos at a speed of about 6.6 km/s in the DART mission, NASA stated that they will change the speed of the object at a rate of less than one millimeter per second. Underlining that it is possible to remove an object from the collision course with the Earth, the authorities stated that asteroids with a diameter of more than 1 kilometer are quite dangerous for our planet.
The Johns Hopkins University website states, “NASA’s first flight mission for planetary defense, the Dual Asteroid Redirect Test (DART), aims to test and validate a method for protecting Earth in the event of a possible asteroid impact threat. The DART mission aims to change an asteroid’s trajectory through kinetic impact. ” statements are included.
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