NASA mission successfully changed the motion of an asteroid

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test successfully changed the trajectory of the asteroid Dimorphos when the NASA spacecraft intentionally slammed into the space rock on September 26, according to the agency. The DART mission, a full-scale demonstration of deflection technology, was the world’s first conducted on behalf of planetary defense. The mission was also the first time humanity intentionally changed the motion of a celestial object in space. #CNN #News

49 comments

  1. Finally, the human race does something that’s actually intelligent. It was a brilliantly designed experiment,

    1. @Milton Milkthistle I love how the mouth breathing masses have long held the stereotype that intelligence is somehow emasculating. I’ll wear that badge with honor. There is no greater praise than the hatred of the common person.

    2. @Unknown If you spent seven seconds learning how destructive an impact would be and the history thereof, assuming you could grasp the subject, you’d see why it is a measure of intelligence.

    1. @Miguel Meneses Alligators, crocs, and all their kind survived the extinction impact. they were safe in the water and ate all that rotting meat.

  2. Science is so cool! Congratulations all involved in this potentially Earth saving endeavor. (Nerds are the real rockstars 🤩)

    1. 🧐🤔🤔So The Earth itself can Reel to & Fro in its Orbit as a Drunk, after mere Tactical Nuke Strikes on places like the Russian Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam, or China three Gorges Dam?

    1. Mass vs mass, mass + velocity = kinetic force. Energy is wave function, the object that struck it is a solid mass object.

  3. A crucial role in the mission is played by LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids), the small spacecraft entirely Italian-made, which will go down in history as the first European CubeSat to fly in deep space, far from our protected terrestrial environment.

    After being released by DART, last September 12, LICIACube flew by the asteroid few tens of km far, witnessing DART’s impact and avoiding the cloud of generated fragments, taking and recording images at the highest resolution possible, thanks to its two on-board cameras: the newly formed crater and the ejecta plume are targeted, supplying unique and fundamental data to scientists about the small celestial body features and the occurred impact dynamics.
    The ASTRA research group researchers, led by professor Michèle Lavagna, Giovanni Zanotti, Michele Ceresoli and Andrea Capannolo from the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology gave a key contribution to this futuristic mission success.

  4. This is a big deal and will likely not get the coverage it should. This is the first time in the history of Earth a species has proven smart enough to prevent planetary cataclysms from occurring that already have a history of causing mass extinctions. This is an achievement of man worth celebrating. Between this and all the effort of citizen scientists discovering near earth asteroids, we can now prevent one of the existential crisis mankind and earth can face where we were once powerless.

    1. Irrelevant of all the hype about the deflection, they did hit a target of 170m diameter bang on center from 10Million KM distance. I give that an A* in navigation wouldn’t you!

  5. My favorite take away from this is when she said “The world doesn’t need Ben Affleck or Bruce Willis”, but she didn’t say Steve Buscemi.
    Moral of the story:
    The world needs Steve Buscemi!

    1. I mean dude is an ex NYC firefighter. If any celebrity were able to save us from an asteroid my money is on him.

    2. Of course the world needs Steve Buscemi. That guy was a FDNY firefighter. When 9/11 happened, Buscemi went back to work as NY City Firefighter to help other firefighters and NY Police officers search for survivors. He worked 12 hour shifts for days on end. He participated in a documentarie in support of firefighter causes and has spoken at union rallies for firefighters to help their causes. Steve Buscemi is a cool guy. The world definitely needs Steve Buscemi!

  6. I guess the next important requirement is to ensure that an astroid can be detected within the required time. That still seems to be a problematic issue especially if it’s trajectory is from the direction of the sun. If I recall correctly there have been such cases over the past few years.

    1. thats exactly right, which means at some point we need to put a telescope in opposite orbit of earth – which will take A LOT of delta-V – but absolutely needed to cover our blind spot.

  7. My hopes for humanity surviving a meteor just went up now hopefully we can get through surviving our own crisis

    1. 🧐🤔🤔So The Earth itself can Reel to & Fro in its Orbit as a Drunk, after mere Tactical Nuke Strikes on places like the Russian Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam, or China three Gorges Dam?

  8. Yay!! So proud of everyone that helped accomplish this!
    Something positive for once! 🇺🇸 🇺🇦 🌎✌

  9. What’s fun about this story is that I understood everything. No huge scientific terms, no complex math! If academics could just report like this, I think we would have a better understanding of the world around us. Great Reporting! 🚀🪨👽☄

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.