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On behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA) will be present in Luxembourg, among others, its director, Jan Wrner, as well as the director of the Hera mission, Ian Carnelli, the first to a binary asteroid and the European contribution to a great experience in the defense of the Earth.
The Hera mission, recently unveiled by ESA, is in the engineering phase, after similar missions were rejected for budgetary reasons.
The American NASA also has its own mission, the DART (reorientation test of a double asteroid), with the aim of colliding in October 2022 against the two-body asyroid Didyme and changing to another one. orbit at a speed of six kilometers per second, nine times faster than a bullet.
The binary system Didymos which is formed by two bodies: Didymain, 780 meters in diameter and the size of a mountain, and Didymoon, a moon of 160 meters, the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which revolves around around
Binary asteroid systems represent only 15% of all known asteroids, but have not been explored until now.
With this project, NASA wants to demonstrate that the Earth can be protected from the future impacts of asteroids and will do so with Didymos, whose trajectory is expected to increase it to only 11 million kilometers from the Earth in 2022.
Mission Hera, which takes its name from the Greek goddess of marriage, is expected to reach Didymos in 2026, to make a scientific map of the surface and structure of its high-resolution visual, laser and radio Didymoon moon.
The day of the asteroid can be celebrated from tomorrow by following the Internet on a 48-hour event involving scientists, astronauts and artists.
Queen's guitarist Brian May, who is also an astrophysicist, speaks in Luxembourg with other experts about the need to accept the risks posed by asteroids, which are remnants of planetary formation. .
ESA Astronaut Matthias Maurer will also participate in the event with colleagues Nicole Scott and Edward Lu, among others.
The interest aroused by asteroids also manifests itself at the arrival on June 27 of the Japanese ship Hayabusa2 to the 162173 Ryugu asteroid, 300 million kilometers from Earth, after a trip from 42 months in space, to study in detail, drop several Japanese mills and a European on the surface and bring a stone sample to Earth in 2020.
Most asteroids orbit in the belt between Jupiter and Mars, the asteroid belt, but some They entered the interior of the solar system and crossed the Earth's orbit.
These are the dangerous ones and those who, according to the experts, deserve attention.
The asteroid Da evokes the anniversary of the Tunguska event, in Siberia, on June 30, 1908, when a space rock of about 37 meters wide entered the planet. atmosphere and exploded in the sky releasing energy equivalent to about 185 bombs from Hiroshima, according to NASA data.
An asteroid the size of Tunguska enters the Earth's atmosphere once every 300 years, according to forecasts.
Of the more than 750,000 asteroids in the solar system, 1,800 have astronomical terms near the Earth, so the danger of impact is real to the experts.
Source and photo: EFE
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