NASA crashes Dart spacecraft on asteroid
– Photo : social media
Scientists have always been concerned that meteorites can hit the Earth and end life. To deal with this threat, NASA’s spacecraft Dart collided with a meteorite Dimorphos, 6.8 million km from Earth. NASA says a spacecraft collision has changed the orbit of an asteroid in a test to protect Earth from future threats. The spacecraft has successfully deflected the asteroid in a test to save Earth.
NASA said that the impact of the Dart mission caused the moonlet demorphos around the asteroid Didymos. Change of class has been confirmed. NASA further said that humans have changed the speed of a celestial body for the first time. This meteorite body was orbiting a 525-foot rocky meteor named Didymos. The path of the meteors has been changed by the collision of the spacecraft. That’s why it was named Double Asteroid Re-Direction Test (DART).
Why was this test needed?
Both meteors were not a threat to the Earth by the way. Still, it was being tested that if a meteorite really came towards Earth in the future, could we change its path? This was called the mission ‘Testing the security of the Earth’. Scientists hoped that the collision would change the path of the meteors. Scientists had been watching the path of both meteors for a long time. Changes after the collision were detected with binoculars.
DART worth Rs 2500 crore, satellite also
- 2,500 crores spent on Dart launched from Earth on 24 November 2021.
- The Draco meteorite helped take pictures of every second of this collision.
- A small satellite ‘Light Italian CubeSat’ was also sent, which separated from the vehicle before the collision and witnessed the entire incident.
- This revealed very clear pictures of the collision up to three minutes later.
thousands of kilometers in space. fragments of asteroid
The Dart mission by NASA last month to protect the Earth from meteorites coming towards Earth was successful. Under this mission, a spacecraft of the US space agency ‘NASA’ successfully hit an asteroid under test, after which the asteroid was shattered. Photos of this mission were released from James Webb and the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronauts around the world were eyeing this mission of NASA. With this test, scientists have tried to find out whether a meteorite coming towards the Earth can be changed by hitting it, so that the Earth can be protected.
During this mission, the entire event and its impact were being monitored by various cameras and telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Telescope. Images taken by Earth-bound telescopes show a giant cloud of dust erupting out of Dimorphos after the collision. Zoomed in images taken from the James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes, it is seen that after the collision, fragments of the asteroid spread over a distance of more than thousands of kilometers in space.
The reaction of Indian scientists about the success of the mission was also revealed. Indian scientists say that there is very little chance of an asteroid hitting the Earth in our lifetime. Krisfin Karthik, a scientist at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, said that ‘we are surrounded by many asteroids and comets that orbit our Sun. Very few of them are dangerous to the earth. Nevertheless, preparing for the future security of the earth is a good step.
Dimorphos is 96 lakh kilometers away from Earth. Its name is based on the Greek word ‘didymos’. It means twin. Actually it is part of the 2500 ft asteroid ‘Didimos’. Didymos was discovered in 1996. Dimorphos was about 525 feet tall and was orbiting 1.2 kilometers from Didymos.