Nasa Dart probe to smash into asteroid at 14,000mph in first ever Earth defence test
26 September 2022, 08:39
Nasa is carrying out a test crash of a probe aimed at deflecting a giant asteroid from hitting earth.
The test operation is being carried out around 7m miles from earth on a target called Dimorphos.
The impact is due to take place at 23.14 GMT today. Telescopes will be watching the aftermath of the collision to study the effectiveness.
The DART or Double Asteroid Redirection Test, involves crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid to try and knock it off a collision course with earth.
The test being conducted in several hours will see a craft crash almost head on into the Dimorphos asteroid at over 20,000 km/h.
Dr Nancy Chabot from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which leads the mission for Nasa, said: “Dart is the first planetary defence test mission to demonstrate running a spacecraft into an asteroid to move the position of that asteroid ever so slightly in space”.
The $300m craft, roughly the size of a vending machine, will crash head-on into the asteroid and will be obliterated on impact.
It is the first ever mission to find out whether asteroids can be deflected off course.
The mission launched from Vandenberg space force base in November last year.
The collision will be captured on Dart’s video camera and other cameras on board a small Italian probe called LiciaCube.
“It’s a very complicated game of cosmic billiards,” said Prof Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer and member of the Nasa Dart investigation team at Queen’s University Belfast. “What we want to do is use as much energy [as we can] from Dart to move the asteroid.”
