If a large asteroid is ever found to be on a direct collision course with Earth, we currently have one tried-and-tested technology that, if further developed, could save us from its potentially devastating impact.
The system was first trialed by NASA two years ago and involved an attempt to change the trajectory of a harmless asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into it. Following initial analysis, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was deemed a success as it did indeed alter the course of the 525-feet-wide (160 meters) Dimorphos asteroid, which orbits the larger Didymos asteroid.
But scientists are keen to learn more about how the impact affected Dimorphos, and to do that the European Space Agency (ESA) will send a spacecraft to rendezvous with it in the upcoming Hera mission.
Set to launch next month, ESA has just shared a video (top) outlining how the mission will proceed and what it hopes to discover.
According to ESA, the Hera mission aims to:
– Learn more about the precise mass and makeup of Dimorphos
– Determine more accurately what effect the impact had on the asteroid
– Confirm if there’s an impact crater or whether Dimorphos completely cracked apart and is now being held together by its own weak gravity
– If the impact did leave a crater, determine its size
The visiting spacecraft will perform observations while keeping a safe distance from the asteroid and its debris clouds, but it will also deploy a couple of much smaller spacecraft that will perform closer observations before landing on Dimorphos. The close-up encounter is a risky endeavor but one that has the potential to gather a large amount of very useful data.
ESA said it wants to “turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defense technique” that will protect Earth if a large asteroid is discovered to be coming our way.
It added: “By the end of Hera’s observations, Dimorphos will become the best studied asteroid in history, which is vital, because if a body of this size ever struck Earth it could destroy a whole city. The dinosaurs had no defense against asteroids because they never had a space agency. But – through Hera – we are teaching ourselves what we can do to reduce this hazard and make space safer.”