In a little less than a year, a 550 kilo NASA spacecraft will intentionally crash into the surface of the asteroid “Dimorphos” 780 meters in diameter. The goal ? Deviate from its trajectory. Qualified as “planetary defense”, this mission must enable humanity to be prepared in the event of a threat of impact in the future.
Prepare for an “Armageddon” scenario
The script is reminiscent of the one in the film “Armageddon”, in which Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck save the planet from a huge asteroid rushing towards Earth. But it’s a very real experience that the US space agency is leading here. While no known large asteroids are currently on a collision course, these are prepare for this eventuality. “We don’t want to find ourselves in a position where an asteroid is heading towards Earth, and where we have to test this technique.” for the first time, said Lindley Johnson of NASA’s Department of Planetary Defense. The mission, called DART (dart in English), will take off from California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on November 23 at 10:20 p.m. local time.
Ten months later, the 550-kilogram spacecraft will hit its target, then located eleven million kilometers from Earth, when the asteroid is closest to Earth. The total cost of the mission is $ 330 million. About 27,000 asteroids close to the blue planet are known at present. Asteroid Bennu, which measures 500 meters in diameter, is one of two identified asteroids in our solar system posing the most risk to Earth, according to NASA. Corn by 2300, the risk of a collision is only 0.057%.