The US space agency NASA is making final preparations to crash a spacecraft into a asteroid in the world’s first planetary defense test.
the mission it’s called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART. The DART spacecraft launched on its journey to the asteroid last November. On September 26, it will aim to hit the asteroid to see how the crash affects the space object’s trajectory.
The test is designed to demonstrate a possible method of changing the direction of asteroids considered threats to Earth.
The mission target will be an asteroid called Dimorphos, which is part of a two-body asteroid system. Dimorphos is a small “little moon” that orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos. Didymos is about 780 meters wide, while Dimorphos is 160 meters.
The asteroid system does not present any danger to Earth. But NASA says it’s being targeted as a more effective way to test the shock method rather than hitting a single asteroid flying through space.
The goal of the DART mission is to see how the crash of the spacecraft will redirect the trajectory and speed of the asteroid. The crash will occur about 11 million kilometers from Earth.
Dimorphos currently completes an orbit around Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. The separation between the centers of the two asteroids is 1.18 kilometers. The DART spacecraft will aim to hit Dimorphos almost head-on. When this happens, it will shorten the time it takes for the asteroid’s small moon to orbit Didymos by several minutes, NASA Explain.
Telescopes on Earth will measure the change in the orbital period.
NASA engineers have said they expect a turnaround of at least 73 seconds for the mission to be considered a success.
Earlier this month, NASA Announced the DART spacecraft had seen the asteroid system for the first time. A series of images were taken on July 27 by an imaging instrument on the spacecraft. The images showed the light emitted by the Didymos system.
NASA said that at the time the images were captured, the spacecraft was about 20 million miles away from the two asteroids. This made it difficult to see much of the Didymos system. But after combining and examining the images, the team was able to improve the quality of the image and identify its Location.
Elena Adams is a DART mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. She said: “This first set of images is being used as a test to test our image techniques.” Adams added that the imaging instrument is what will guide the DART spacecraft to its asteroid target.
In the final hours before the accident, the spacecraft will need to view and process images of the asteroid system as it travels to the target alone without human involvement, NASA said. said.
The DART operation will be captured in images taken by a CubeSat. CubeSats are small research spacecraft also known as nanosatellites.
The 14-kilogram CubeSat that will capture the images is called LICIACube. It is a project of the Italian Space Agency. It was designed and built by the Italian space engineering company Argotec. LICIACube is scheduled to be deployed from the spacecraft about 10 days before the accident.
LICIACube is equipped with two separate chambers. They are designed to collect scientific data and report back to CubeSat’s self-guiding system. The cameras will continuously capture the impact of the asteroid, as well as the resulting effects of the operation.
Elisabetta Dotto is a member of the LICIACube scientific team at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. She said in a statement that she and other scientists are “anxious” to receive and examine the images captured by the CubeSat. “It will be very exciting to study, for the first time, the nature and structure of such weird objects like binary [near-Earth asteroids].”
I’m Bryan Lynn.
Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from NASA and The Associated Press.
Quiz – NASA makes final preparations to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid
Start the Quiz to find out
____________________________________________________
words in this story
asteroid – north. a rocky object that revolves around the sun like a planet
mission – north. a flight of an airplane or spacecraft to perform a specific task
Location – north. the place where something happens
technique – north. a method
anxious – adj. really want to do something
weird – adj. very unusual or strange
binary – adj. relating to two things
________________________________________________________
We want to hear from you. We have a new feedback system. Is that how it works:
- 1. Write your comment in the box.
- 2. Below the box, you can see four images for social media accounts. They are for Disqus, Facebook, Twitter and Google.
- 3. Click on an image and a box will appear. Enter the login for your social media account. Or you can create one on the Disqus system. It’s the blue circle with a “D” in it. It’s free.
