It is known that an asteroid is now approaching Earth. To prevent it from colliding with the planet, NASA
According to NASA classification, potentiallyDangerous objects in space are those that have a diameter of more than 140 meters and are located at a distance of 7.4 million kilometers or closer to Earth. Therefore, it is quite possible to add Didymos with its asteroid satellite Dimorphos to this list. Diameter of the first – 780 meters, second – 160 meters.
How can you get rid of thisdangers? Easiest to shoot down. Therefore, NASA launched the DART (Double Asteriod Redirection Test) project. It will involve sending into space a probe whose mass is – 555 kilograms. It will take a little less than a year for this probe to reach the Didim system.
The spacecraft is planned to be launched on November 242021. The launch vehicle will be Falcon 9. The final target in this mission – Dimorph. It is planned that the probe will crash into it on October 2, 2022 at a speed of 6.6 km/s. After this, the author continues, the device will shatter into pieces, and only a crater will remain on the space object. At first glance it seems that this is useless.
However, mathematical calculations suggest otherwise.According to them, the speed of movement of Dimorph in its orbit will increase by 0.4 mm / s. This will change the trajectory of movement and will lead to the fact that the satellite will make one revolution around Didim 10 minutes faster. That is, the force of the collision should be enough to save humanity from a catastrophe.
The only problem we encounteredscientists, – lack of knowledge about the degree of porosity of the Dimorph structure. But in any case, the impact of the probe will knock out many fragments from the surface of the asteroid, which will then fall to the surface of our planet in the form of meteor shower.
Source: Life