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Photo: AFP / Referential
(Caracas, June 29, 2012) – Scientists agree that the smallest asteroids are the most dangerous and the most to watch and detect better for prevent an impact on the Earth, which could cause many deaths.
This is one of the conclusions reached by scientists around the world gathered Friday and Saturday in Luxembourg, on the occasion of the celebration of Asteroid, June 30.
Another is that prevention is very important and that for this it is necessary to develop asteroid detection and tracking missions and, finally, to divert them from their trajectory The Earth [19659004] Therefore, the European Space Agency (ESA) will request the approval of the Hera mission to the Council of Ministers in December 2019, at a cost of 250 million euros (289 million dollars).
Between your goal s, Hera would measure the result of a previous NASA mission, the DART (a double asteroid redirection test), which in October 2022 aims to divert the Asyroid two-body Didyma, whose trajectory laughed should lead you to spend this year only 11 million kilometers from the Earth.
Hera Project Director Ian Carnelli told Efe that "this mission will complete the US mission, it is a unique opportunity to complement international experience and collaboration."
This is also, first mission to a binary asteroid, two-body, and the European contribution to a great experiment of defense of the Earth.
The Didymos binary system consists of two bodies: Didymain, 780 meters in diameter and the size of a mountain, and Didymoon, a 160-meter moon, the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, in orbit around.
The collision of the NASA mission will change the speed of the moon in its orbit around the main body in a fraction of 1%, which can be measured with telescopes of the Earth.
DART will have an impact on Didymos' moon 1.5 meters from the center and slow its orbital period 12 hours only in 5 mi some, but 0.5 millimeters per second, a very small amount but enough to change his speed, divert him and stop him from reaching the Earth, said Carnelli.
The engineer at Eospatial added that these data are nominal, in theory, but when the experiment is done will create a crater which will release material, and therefore the slowdown in the orbit could be higher.
NASA wants with this project to demonstrate that you can protect the Earth from future impacts of asteroids and for that DART will intercept the Didymos moon in early October of 2022.
The ESA wants to arrive at this asteroid four years later, in 2026, to measure how much it has displaced the Asteroid, its physical dynamics, its properties and to make high-resolution images of the crater generated by DART, explained Carnelli.
The expert warned that, precisely, "the smaller asteroids are the most dangerous because they reflect less light and look less and, although today there is there is no threat to the population, when there is, there will be time to do something and therefore it is important to prevent. "
asteroids orbiting in the belt between Jupiter and Mars, known as one of the asteroids, but some have entered the interior of the solar system and are crossing the orbit of the Earth.
These are the dangerous and those who, according to experts, deserve attention.
The Hera Mission, which takes its name from the Greek goddess of marriage and which ESA will propose in more detail in March of next year, had a predecessor of the AIM (Impact mission against an asteroid) and Don Quixote to investigate how an asteroid could be hijacked if necessary, whose main contractor was the Spanish company Deimos Space, which was not implemented for budgetary reasons.
The 160-meter asteroid, like Didymos's moon, represents a greater threat and would create damage regardless of where it fell, probably in the water, creating a tsunami . It could destroy a city like Madrid or Paris or a bigger one and people would die, "according to Carnelli.
With EFE information
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