NASA launches test mission of asteroid-deflecting spacecraft
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Friday
January 27, 2023

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2023
NASA launches test mission of asteroid-deflecting spacecraft

Science

Reuters
24 November, 2021, 10:55 am
Last modified: 24 November, 2021, 01:45 pm

Related News

  • NASA, Boeing team up to develop lower-emissions aircraft
  • NASA issues award for greener, more fuel-efficient airliner of future
  • Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope finds its first planet – and it is very similar to Earth
  • Last surviving Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham dies at 90
  • NASA formally retires Mars InSight lander after 4-year mission

NASA launches test mission of asteroid-deflecting spacecraft

Once released into space, DART will journey 10 months to its destination, some 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth

Reuters
24 November, 2021, 10:55 am
Last modified: 24 November, 2021, 01:45 pm
Photo : Reuters
Photo : Reuters

A spacecraft that must ultimately crash to succeed was launched late on Tuesday from California on a NASA mission to demonstrate the world's first planetary defense system, designed to deflect an asteroid from a potential doomsday collision with Earth.

The DART spacecraft soared into the night sky at 10:21 p.m. Pacific time on Tuesday (1:21 a.m. Eastern/0621 GMT Wednesday) from Vandenberg US Space Force Base, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, carried aboard a SpaceX-owned Falcon 9 rocket.

The launch was shown live on NASA TV.

The DART payload, about the size of a small car, was released from the booster minutes after launch to begin a 10-month journey into deep space, some 6.8 million miles (11 km) from Earth.

Once there DART will test its ability to alter an asteroid's trajectory with sheer kinetic force, plowing into it at high speed to nudge the space boulder off course just enough to keep our planet out of harm's way.

Cameras mounted on the impactor and on a briefcase-sized mini-spacecraft to be released from DART about 10 days beforehand will record the collision and beam images of it back to Earth.

The asteroid DART is aimed at poses no actual threat and is tiny compared with the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, leading to extinction of the dinosaurs. But scientists say smaller asteroids are far more common and pose a greater theoretical danger in the near term.

DART's target is an asteroid "moonlet" the size of a football stadium that orbits a chunk of rock five times larger in a binary asteroid system named Didymos, the Greek word for twin.

The team behind DART, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, chose the Didymos system because its relative proximity to Earth and dual-asteroid configuration make it ideal for observing the results of the impact.

BUMPING ASTEROID MOONLET

The plan is to fly the DART spacecraft directly into the moonlet, called Dimorphos, at 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kph), bumping it hard enough to shift its orbital track around the larger asteroid.

Cameras on the impactor and on a briefcase-sized mini-spacecraft released from DART about 10 days beforehand will record the collision and beam images back to Earth. Ground-based telescopes will measure how much the moonlet's orbit around Didymos changes.

The DART team expects to shorten Dimorphos' orbital track by 10 minutes but would consider at least 73 seconds a success. A small nudge to an asteroid millions of miles away would be sufficient to safely reroute it.

DART is the latest of several NASA missions of recent years to explore and interact with asteroids, primordial rocky remnants from the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.

Last month, NASA launched a probe on a voyage to the Trojan asteroid clusters orbiting near Jupiter, while the grab-and-go spacecraft OSIRES-REx is on its way back to Earth with a sample collected last October from the asteroid Bennu.

The Dimorphos moonlet is one of the smallest astronomical objects to receive a permanent name and is one of 27,500 known near-Earth asteroids of all sizes tracked by NASA.

Although all none poses a foreseeable hazard to humankind, NASA estimates many more asteroids remain undetected in the near-Earth vicinity.

The DART spacecraft, cube-shaped with two rectangular solar arrays, is due to rendezvous with the Didymos-Dimorphos pair in late September 2022.

NASA put the entire cost of the DART project at $330 million, well below that of many of the space agency's most ambitious science missions. 

Top News / World+Biz

NASA / Asteroid / spacecraft

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • Photo: Bloomberg
    India's Adani slammed by $48 bln stock rout, clouding record share sale
  • Infograph: TBS
    State banks spend 80% of their forex for govt imports in H1
  • Global central banks preaching on pay are enforcing squeeze too
    Global central banks preaching on pay are enforcing squeeze too

MOST VIEWED

  • Simulated image shows the positions and orbits of the newly discovered 591 high velocity stars by a Chinese research team. Photo: National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
    Star visibility eroding rapidly as night sky gets brighter: study
  • The NASA logo hangs in the Mission Operations Control Center at Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, U.S., October 26, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
    NASA, Boeing team up to develop lower-emissions aircraft
  • Photo: Collected
    12-million-year-old whale fossil skull found in Maryland
  • Photo: Collected
    New species of lizard discovered in Peru national park
  • A view of a fossil at the area where scientists discovered megaraptor fossils at 'Guido' hill in the Chilean Patagonia area, close to Torres del Paine park, in Magallanes and Antarctic region, Chile in this undated handout photo provided by the Instituto Chileno Antartico on January 16, 2023. Instituto Chileno Antartico/Handout via REUTERS
    Scientists unearth megaraptors, feathered dinosaur fossils in Chile's Patagonia
  • Represenattional image. Photo: Collected
    Alcohol consumption in any quantity can be detrimental to health, says US study

Related News

  • NASA, Boeing team up to develop lower-emissions aircraft
  • NASA issues award for greener, more fuel-efficient airliner of future
  • Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope finds its first planet – and it is very similar to Earth
  • Last surviving Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham dies at 90
  • NASA formally retires Mars InSight lander after 4-year mission

Features

Sketch:TBS

Why we need consumer education for consumer wellbeing

8h | Thoughts
Dr Ahsan H Mansur, Executive Director, Policy Research Institute. Illustration: TBS

Twin shocks call for stronger domestic policy response

9h | Thoughts
December-er shohor, taxi taken for airport and the Park Street bathed in lights. Photo: Jannatul Naym Pieal

Exploring Kolkata on foot, empowered by Google Maps

9h | Explorer
Island hopping in Bangladesh?

Island hopping in Bangladesh?

11h | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

Kajol’s road paintings bring change in Gafargaon

Kajol’s road paintings bring change in Gafargaon

23h | TBS Stories
Carew & Company witnessed a remarkable growth

Carew & Company witnessed a remarkable growth

1d | TBS Stories
After all the controversies, how is Shah Rukh Khan's ‘Pathaan’?

After all the controversies, how is Shah Rukh Khan's ‘Pathaan’?

56m | TBS Entertainment
PCB recalls cricketers from BPL ahead of PSL

PCB recalls cricketers from BPL ahead of PSL

1d | TBS SPORTS

Most Read

1
Picture: Collected
Bangladesh

US Embassy condemns recent incidents of visa fraud

2
Four top bankers arrested in DSA case filed by S Alam group 
Bangladesh

Four top bankers arrested in DSA case filed by S Alam group 

3
Illustration: TBS
Banking

16 banks at risk of capital shortfall if top 3 borrowers default

4
Photo: Collected
Splash

Hansal Mehta responds as Twitter user calls him 'shameless' for making Faraaz

5
A frozen Beyond Burger plant-based patty. Photographer: AKIRA for Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Special

Fake meat was supposed to save the world. It became just another fad

6
Representational Image
Banking

Cash-strapped Islami, Al-Arafah and National turn to Sonali Bank for costly fund

EMAIL US
[email protected]
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2023
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - [email protected]

For advertisement- [email protected]