Risky business: will the world rise to the challenge of asteroid…
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Earth has been stuck in a cosmic shooting gallery since its formation.
About 4 billion years ago, the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn shifted, barreling through a dense ring of asteroids and comets left over from the solar system’s formation. Some of these ancient worlds slammed into Earth, possibly carrying water and organic materials here that kick-started life.
But what the universe giveth, it can taketh away. Sixty-six million years ago—long after life had taken hold—a 10-kilometer-wide (6.2-mile-wide) asteroid struck Earth, snuffing out the dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program. Fortunately, we do.
This November, NASA will launch the world’s first mission to test a method of deflecting an asteroid. DART, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, will spend a year cruising through space to asteroid Didymos and its small moon, Dimorphos. (Neither are on course to hit Earth; this is only a test.)
As it approaches Didymos and Dimorphos in September 2022, DART will lock onto Dimorphos. The washing-machine-sized spacecraft won’t slow down, intentionally smashing into Dimorphos at a speed of 6.6 kilometers (4.1 miles) per second.
There won’t be much of the probe left, says Andy Rivkin, a planetary astronomer and DART investigation lead at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore, Maryland.
“Psychologically, we have been trying to remind ourselves that DART is a tool we’re using to get some data, to do a job,” Rivkin tells The Planetary Society. “We try not to anthropomorphize it too much, in the way people don’t have a favorite nail or screw.”
DART’s impact will be akin to detonating several tons of TNT, creating a crater as wide as a bowling lane. Dimorphos, which weighs almost 5 million metric tons, will absorb the blow like a lumbering giant, wobbling enough to drop its orbital period around Didymos from about 11.9 to 11.8 hours—a difference of roughly 10 minutes.
But that will be enough. From Earth, Dimorphos and Didymos look like a single point of light that brightens and dims at regular intervals as Dimorphos passes behind and in front of Didymos. Astronomers watching through telescopes will see that interval change. While Dimorphos and Didymos aren’t on course to hit Earth, DART will confirm that we have the capability to change the trajectory of an asteroid if we need to do so.
The mission is a turning point for the world’s nascent planetary defense efforts, but there is still much work to be done. Tens of thousands of city-killer-sized asteroids must still be found, tracked, and studied. Future missions need to test other methods of deflecting space rocks. And countries must work together to coordinate global response strategies if we find an asteroid on course to hit Earth.
“This is part of a much bigger strategy— understanding what’s out there and making a plan,” Rivkin says.
Vermin of the Sky
Our brains like to categorize things. This has historically been a problem for asteroids, which defy simple categorization.
Astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the first asteroid, Ceres, by accident in 1801 while making a star map. Ceres and three other asteroids discovered around the same time were often called planets until the mid-1800s, when astronomers began to discover a flood of similar small worlds between Mars and Jupiter.
So, what should these worlds be called? Astronomers veered between planets, small planets, minor planets, and asteroids—the latter an imprecise Greek word that means “star-like.” The debate on what to call small worlds like Pluto has arguably raged for more than 170 years.
In 1898, astronomers discovered Eros, an asteroid that veers unnervingly close to Earth. Like its predecessors, this near-Earth asteroid was initially an outlier before scientists learned there were many more like it.
The early to mid-20th century was a boon for learning our place in space, as astronomers realized that the spiral smudges of light in their telescopes were entire galaxies separate from our own, set in an ever-expanding, mind-bogglingly large universe.
Asteroids, meanwhile, got downgraded to party-crasher status. They frequently showed up as streaks of light that ruined long-exposure photographs of gorgeous deep-sky objects. This earned them an infamous nickname that you can imagine being uttered in tandem with a shaking fist: “vermin of the sky.”
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