NASA's Dart Probe To Smash Into Asteroid in First Earth Defence Test (theguardian.com) 25
Most mission scientists would wince at the thought of their spacecraft being smashed to smithereens. But for those behind Nasa's Dart probe, anything short of total destruction will be chalked up as a failure. From a report: The $330m spacecraft is due to slam head-on into an asteroid about 11m kilometres above the Indian Ocean soon after midnight on Monday. The impact, at nearly seven kilometres a second, will obliterate the half-tonne probe, all in the name of planetary defence. Not that Dimorphos, the asteroid in question, poses any threat to humanity. The Dart, or double asteroid redirection test, is an experiment, the first mission ever to assess whether asteroids can be deflected should one ever be found on a collision course with Earth. A well-placed nudge could avert Armageddon, or so the thinking goes, and spare humans the same fate as the dinosaurs.
"It's a very complicated game of cosmic billiards," said Prof Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer and member of the Nasa Dart investigation team at Queen's University Belfast. "What we want to do is use as much energy [as we can] from Dart to move the asteroid." With telescopes constantly scanning the skies, scientists hope to have some notice if an asteroid were ever to present a major threat. "If we are able to see far enough in advance and know that an asteroid might be a problem, pushing it out of the way will be much safer than the big Hollywood idea of blowing it up," said Catriona McDonald, a PhD student at Warwick University. The Dart mission launched from Vandenberg space force base in November last year. On Monday night, mission controllers will hand control to Dart's software and let the probe steer itself into oblivion.
"It's a very complicated game of cosmic billiards," said Prof Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer and member of the Nasa Dart investigation team at Queen's University Belfast. "What we want to do is use as much energy [as we can] from Dart to move the asteroid." With telescopes constantly scanning the skies, scientists hope to have some notice if an asteroid were ever to present a major threat. "If we are able to see far enough in advance and know that an asteroid might be a problem, pushing it out of the way will be much safer than the big Hollywood idea of blowing it up," said Catriona McDonald, a PhD student at Warwick University. The Dart mission launched from Vandenberg space force base in November last year. On Monday night, mission controllers will hand control to Dart's software and let the probe steer itself into oblivion.
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If they accelerated the probe to ~0.99c first and impacted at that speed. I think we could get some good science from that.
In that case, it wouldn't be the collision that kills the probe, it'd be the acceleration :)
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Considering the largest object we've ever accelerated to 0.99c is an atomic nucleus, I'd say most of the science we could get from that (and conversely, would have to solve before doing that) is how to propel macroscopic objects to relativistic speeds.
Huston, we have a problem! (Score:2)
Oops! forgot to use the billiard table balls' random calculations.
Time zone, please? (Score:2)
Is that Monday morning, between 24:00 and 01:00, or Tuesday morning?
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It's apparently UTC (remember, The Guardian is a UK news outlet).
According to other news articles and Double Asteroid Redirection Test [jhuapl.edu] (The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory), the impact time is: September 26, 2022, 7:14 p.m. EDT
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I think this is a more important test than some people seem to think it is.
Whoops (Score:1)
People don't get space (Score:3)
Small nudges over a long time add up and it takes very little to "spoil the aim" of something going toward an Earth-sized target from an astronomical distance. Making one object miss is easier than making a cloud of debris miss, which is why the nuclear option is not the best idea. DART is an interesting in-between, sudden but not destructive and going for a small change. And it's easier to arrange a high speed collision than to land an ion drive or attach a solar sail.
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Making one object miss is easier than making a cloud of debris miss, which is why the nuclear option is not the best idea.
While the most Hollywood worthy nuclear option involves a shuttle full of oil roughnecks, the most practical involves a standoff blast that vaporizes a surface layer to provide momentum without significantly fragmenting the body. However, developing space based nuclear missiles is far more complicated and has political ramifications, so here we are.
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... and to do that, we need to have a good measure of how strong an average (so probably "rubble pile") asteroid is.
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And it's easier to arrange a high speed collision than to land an ion drive or attach a solar sail.
I often considered that the optimal way deflect an asteroid is to have many hundreds of robotic craft pre-accelerated with ion drives into various solar system orbits so that they already have a significant amount of stored energy. When (as opposed to *if*) the time comes to use them it would be easier to redirect an object that is still some distance away by repeatedly smashing such craft into it.
As for the nuclear option, we have significant amounts of DU that could be a compact and low risk material
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You and hundreds of others.
The "ion drives" is a worthwhile twist - a mass-efficient way of getting kinetic energy into an object. Unfortunately, the amount of kinetic energy you can get into a kilogram of mass and have it remain in the solar system is limited by (checks details) th
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Thanks RockDoctor - that's an awesome reply and I appreciate the information.
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The problem too is there is no such thing as an "asteroid".
Some asteroids are one big rock - if you explode something on them they shatter into a million pieces.
Some asteroids are basically a collection of little rocks. You can't really give little "pushes" to these as your thing doing the pushing will likely just go right through it like the asteroid was a big blob of jelly. You probably have to use some sort of gravity influence to gradually pull it away.
Then there are asteroids that are frozen gas, where
Eleven metres above the Indian Ocean?!? (Score:3, Informative)
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NASA Television (Score:1)
Splat occured a few hours ago! (Score:1)
Glad this went better than the last time (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]