NASA will launch the DART probe into space tonight at 1.14pm. Its goal is to hit the asteroid Dymorphos, a 160-meter-diameter boulder that travels 11 million kilometers from our planet. Although it does not pose a threat, the mission aims to test the ability of space aeronautics to deflect the trajectories of celestial bodies of this size. Already “only” an asteroid 50 meters in diameter can cause an impact 150 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The costs for the development, monitoring and launch of the probe destined to crash amounts to 324.5 million dollars.
Although Dymorphos is a satellite of Didymos, a larger asteroid that allows us to identify it, the probe travels towards a body whose exact shape is unknown, it will be its intelligence to recognize it a few minutes before impact. Accompanying DART there is a micro satellite that will resume the event called Licia Cube. The latter is the Italian contribution to the mission, coordinated by the National Institute of Astrophysics and carried out by scientists from the Milan Polytechnic and the University of Bologna.
In October 2024, Hera will be sent, another probe that will have to ascertain the damage caused to Dymorphos by DART.
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