NASA, ready to impact with the asteroid to deflect the path. Save the planet program in progress

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) It is programmed to have Impact on the asteroid Demorphos On Monday, September 26, when the space object approaches Earth. Unlike most asteroid movies, Space ship The size of the vending machine launched in November 2021, and will move to it independently Impact on the asteroid.

To measure the impact of the spacecraft, which cost $330 million. Asteroid Demorphos orbiting a larger asteroid, Didymos. Scientists at Johns Hopkins University will first analyze how long it takes the asteroid Demorphos to orbit the main asteroid, both before and after the collision.

If the collision is successful, the asteroid Demorphos will complete its orbit in a shorter period of time. The Lowell Discovery Telescope in Flagstaff, Arizona, has been closely monitoring the orbital path of Demorphos for this very reason.

This experiment requires a great deal of knowledge of the asteroid system Before planning the turn, Lowell Observatory astronomer Nick Moskovitz of NASA said. We don’t want, at the last minute, to say “Oh, that’s something we didn’t think made the mission fail,” because that test is part of the mission rescue program. Planet of catastrophe, in case of collision.

Collection Scientists must make sure that the orbit has changed due to the impact And not from other factors such as the high temperature of the sun on one side of the asteroid, which may change its course, or otherwise.

NASA hopes that DART will make it easier to assess the effectiveness of spacecraft’s impact on potentially dangerous asteroids and allowing how to apply this methodology for use in future planetary defense scenarios.

If the test is successful, in case A An asteroid will head towards Earth, and it can deflect.