NASA crashed a spaceship into an asteroid. However don’t fear, that’s excellent news. This week’s profitable Double Asteroid Redirection Take a look at (DART) is trigger each for celebration and for motion. To make the mission rely for greater than a nifty science demonstration, there’s work to be carried out.
Asteroid collisions with our planet are what’s referred to as low-probability, high-impact occasions — much like, say, pandemics. May-be catastrophes don’t are inclined to get as a lot consideration as smaller-scale issues with a better probability of occurring throughout our lifetimes. NASA’s DART experiment is a welcome departure from this norm: The undertaking sent a vehicle roughly the scale of a golf cart careening right into a rock roughly the scale of the Nice Pyramid of Giza, aiming to not annihilate the asteroid however reasonably to nudge it. By altering the orbit solely barely, NASA confirmed it could possibly, effectively, save the world. The asteroid that DART flung itself in opposition to this week didn’t pose a menace now or within the foreseeable future, but when we all know one other asteroid does, we are able to theoretically push it astray.
