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- NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are collaborating on missions on a system of binary asteroids.
- The DART and Hera missions will try to deviate the Didymoon star and study it.
- A global defense system is important to prevent large-scale disasters.
It's not just a Hollywood hype that a shock from an asteroid would crash on Earth would have catastrophic consequences. Depending on the size of the asteroid, the effects could range from millions of deaths to the end of all life. Towns destroyed. Climate changed forever. Do you remember dinosaurs?
To avoid such eventualities, space agencies around the world are developing global defense approaches. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have teamed up for the first historical test of a ground defense system with missions aimed at diverting an asteroid from its trajectory.
the Double asteroid re-routing test (DART) The project is of particular interest to an asteroid duo including a 780-meter-long asteroid called "Didymos" and its smaller orbiting rock, christened "Didymoon". It's about the size of the Giza pyramid (160 m wide).
The plan for NASA's DART mission is to launch a probe in 2020-2021 that will reach Didymoon in October 2022. It will then crash at about 4 miles per second, diverting it from the previous course.
This NASA animation shows how the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) could target Didymoon, the smaller one (left).
ESA's Hera mission From 2026 will land a cube satellite on Diddymoon after impact to study what happened and determine if the orbit of the asteroid around the biggest rock has changed. The Hera probe, which will be launched in 2023, will also collect information on the mass and surface properties of the asteroid, as well as on the crater left by DART. The CubeSat will probably land near the poles of the asteroid.
"This will give us a good estimate of the impulse transfer of the impact and hence its efficiency as a deviation technique," adds Michael Küppers, Hera project scientist. "These are fundamental parameters to enable the validation of the numerical impact models needed to design future deflection missions, and we will understand better if this technique can be used even for larger asteroids, which gives us the certainty to be able to protect our planet if necessary. "
Credit: ESA
Mission infographic.
Giant rocks do not presently represent a danger for the Earth and have been chosen because they will be seven million kilometers from our planet, even at their nearest point. In addition, Didymoon, which will be the smallest asteroid ever visited, is useful to study because its size makes it a greater risk. These rocks are more difficult to follow. If it were to crash on Earth, the resulting disaster would be horrendous at the regional level.
The missions will also help us better understand the binary asteroid systems, which account for about 15% of the asteroids detected. They will also test a technology that could prove useful for the burgeoning field of asteroid mining.
Asteroids and comets visited by a spacecraft from Earth
Global Society
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