And, for the first time, next fall, a spacecraft will attempt to collide with an asteroid, as an experiment to show how such a space body can deviate if it is heading towards Earth, Director of Planetary Sciences at NASA, Laurie Glees, revealed on Sunday.
“I feel that once this test is completed, we will have a lot of information, and we will be more prepared in the future to deal with dangerous asteroids,” Gleese explained.
The first step of the experiment will begin on Tuesday, as SpaceX will launch NASA’s “DART” mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
“Many facts are still unknown about the test result, because NASA has little knowledge of the composition of the target asteroid (Demorphos), which is the size of a football field,” UBI news agency quoted DART scientist Tom Statler as saying.
The mission, estimated to cost $330 million, will fly into the Didymos asteroid system, which is two objects that orbit each other.
The target asteroid, Demorphos, is a satellite of Didimos, knowing that the spacecraft will fly to it at a speed of 15,000 miles per hour, and ground-based telescopes will monitor the collision, its impact, and its ability to change course.
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