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Telescopes and spaceships are already watching the sky for potentially dangerous asteroids, but what could be done to actually deflect a dangerous object heading for the Earth?
May 1, the hearing at the 6th conference of the International Academy of Astronautics on Planetary Defense heard over a dozen presentations relating to an upcoming test to move an asteroid and to the potential tracking mission that would see the results closely.
The next mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), will send a spacecraft crash over an object the size of which could pose a threat to the Earth. According to NASA, nearly one-sixth of the Earth-Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA) known are multi-body or binary systems, and DART will visit one of these systems to perform his mission.
Related: Images: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids
The overall goal of the mission – which will perform its crash test in about two years – is to determine what future tools could be used to thwart the orbit of a potentially dangerous asteroid. The mission is led by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University (JHU / APL) and managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center's Planetary Missions Program Office for NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
DART will travel to the Didymos 65803 asteroid binary system and sneak into the smaller of the two objects, also called "Didymoon" or Didymos B. The two rocks may also receive another terrestrial visitor after DART. The European Space Agency propose a mission called Hera, who would explore Didymos and, alongside the first two cubesats to travel in space, discover the consequences of the impact of the DART.
Didymos is approximately 2,540 feet (775 meters) wide and Didymoon is 540 feet (165 meters) wide.
The mission launch window is now scheduled to open in July 2021, according to Cheryl Reed, Project Manager at DART. She also said on May 1 that current estimates suggest that the spacecraft will have a mass of 1,224 pounds. (555 kg) and will reach a closing speed of 24,900 km / h (14,900 mph) before hitting Didymoon in 2022.
The spacecraft will use the kinetic impactor technique to strike Didymoon and change the movement of the asteroid. (The probe will not use explosive.)
Simulated image of the Didymos system, based on the photometric light curve and the radar data. The main body is about 800 meters in diameter and the moon, called Didymoon or Didymos B, is about 492 feet (150 meters).
(Image: © Naidu et al., AIDA Workshop, 2016 via NASA)
Several researchers discussed during the conference an element of this collision: the amount of material ejected from the asteroid after the impact of the probe would have helped to stimulate the deflection – the factor of improvement of the amount of movement, called beta. Research teams are working on 2D and 3D models to better understand how the composition of Didymoon, the surface material or the angle of impact of DART, for example, would affect the deflection.
The Hera mission will receive a final funding decision in November 2019. If it gets the green light, Hera and its two cubesats, APEX and Juventas, will perform a series of measurements, observing the shape of the DART impact crater, Didymoon's mass, the density and porosity of the asteroid, and more.
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