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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Despite humanity's current struggle against the novel coronavirus, and despite it taking up most of our attention, other threats still exist. The very real threat of a possible asteroid strike on Earth in the future is taking a backseat for now, but it's still there.
Though an asteroid strike seems kind of ephemeral right now, it's a real threat, and one that—unlike a coronavirus—has the potential to end humanity. Agencies like NASA and the ESA are still working on their plans to protect us from that threat.
NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission is scheduled to launch on July 22, 2021. It's a demonstration mission to study the use of kinetic impact to deflect an asteroid. It'll head for the tiny binary asteroid system called Didymos, (or 65803 Didymos.) This double asteroid system poses no threat to Earth.
[...] The engine comes in two primary components: the thruster and the power processing unit (PPU.) NEXT-C is getting ready for the mission with a series of tests, both performance and environmental. The thruster was put through vibration, thermal vacuum and performance tests before being integrated with its PPU. It was also subjected to simulated spaceflight conditions: the extreme vibration during launch, and the extreme cold of space.
NEXT-C is a powerful engine. It's nothing like a rocket, which requires a massive amount of thrust to lift something away from Earth's gravity. But in terms of ion drives, it's a very powerful unit. It's about three times more powerful than the NSTAR ion drives on NASA's DAWN and Deep Space One spacecraft.
NEXT can produce 6.9 kW thrust power and 236 mN thrust. The engine has produced the highest total impulse of any ion engine: 17 MN·s. It also has a specific impulse, which is a measure of how efficiently it uses propellant, of 4,190 seconds, compared to NSTAR's 3,120.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 29 2020, @11:32AM (2 children)
You've gone to all the trouble of getting an ion engine out there, to the asteroid you want to move. So - land, gently, reorient the thrusters, and push the asteroid along. Added benefits are, you get to keep all of your telemetry gear in working condition.
Yeah, I understand, you'll "waste" fuel and reaction mass while matching orbit with the target asteroid. I also understand that the crashy-smashy people will be deprived of a good show. Still - science, right? Put the package filled with instruments on the surface, then play around with the thrust while you take measurements. That's a lot more sciency than a three-second action thriller.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @01:38PM (1 child)
IANARS -- but I can see that threatening asteroids will have a velocity vector aimed generally in the direction of Earth, at least on their "final approach". Thus, to match velocity requires getting to a point on the approach path, and then reversing to perhaps an even higher velocity. This may not be practical?
The other case is an asteroid in a (solar?) orbit that intersects with Earth after a number of orbits. In this case it might be possible to catch up from the rear?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 30 2020, @03:41PM
Threatening asteroids is not politically correct and will get earth branded as a bully.
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