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NASA will impact a small asteroid with a spacecraft and measure changes in its orbit around a larger asteroid:
The first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defense -- the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) -- is moving from concept development to preliminary design phase, following NASA's approval on June 23.
"DART would be NASA's first mission to demonstrate what's known as the kinetic impactor technique -- striking the asteroid to shift its orbit -- to defend against a potential future asteroid impact," said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This approval step advances the project toward an historic test with a non-threatening small asteroid."
While current law directs the development of the DART mission, DART is not identified as a specific budget item in the Administration's Fiscal Year 2018 budget.
The target for DART is an asteroid that will have a distant approach to Earth in October 2022, and then again in 2024. The asteroid is called Didymos -- Greek for "twin" -- because it's an asteroid binary system that consists of two bodies: Didymos A, about one-half mile (780 meters) in size, and a smaller asteroid orbiting it called Didymos B, about 530 feet (160 meters) in size. DART would impact only the smaller of the two bodies, Didymos B.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/65803_Didymos
Related: https://www.nas.nasa.gov/publications/articles/feature_asteroid_simulations.html
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @12:46AM (4 children)
Seems like the cueball needs an awful lot of mass and/or thrust to make a measurable difference.
...and I hope that guy who did his calculations in imperial units (when everyone else was using MKS) isn't working on this one.
I can imagine some space cowboy making things WORSE.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday July 03 2017, @04:20AM (3 children)
I guess this is the first step towards realising the concept of intergalactic bar billiards. As long as it doesn't get potted straight into a black hole like that planet in the seventh dimension was the other day, they should be fine.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 03 2017, @06:29AM (2 children)
This is a interplanetary bar billiard where making the wrong move may be the last one anyone makes.
65803 Didymos with its 780 meters is enough in the Torino scale to cause "unprecedented regional devastation for a land impact or the threat of a major tsunami for an ocean impact".
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday July 03 2017, @05:31PM
It's the smaller body that's going to be hit.
Anyway, it'd be just as likely to miss Earth thanks to this test as it would be to hit if left alone.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 03 2017, @11:30PM
It's unlikely to hit Earth. Ever. But if you don't practice these techniques now, there won't be any deflections later.
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