On Monday evening, a robotic NASA spacecraft is programmed to ram itself into a distant asteroid at 25,500 kilometres an hour in deep space to demonstrate the agency’s future ability to defend Earth fromIt’s a fast action scene straight out of a sci-fi movie: The spacecraft, named DART, will first spot an asteroid the size of a football stadium named Dimorphos as a single pixel in its camera.
If DART can successfully push the asteroid off course, it could prove a viable defence strategy if scientists discover an asteroid headed toward Earth with enough size and heft to hit with potentially catastrophic consequences. Scientists have identified most of the gigantic asteroids that could wipe out the planet, and none of those known objects pose a threat.
But NASA thinks that’s all that will be needed to do the trick. That’s because, over time and distance, the tiny change in trajectory will multiply manyfold, enough to ensure the huge space rock would, were Earth in its path, whiz safely by.
Source: Entertainment Trends (entertainmenttrends.net)
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