Scientists are also tracking around 900 asteroids more than 3,000 feet in size, monsters that NASA says are capable of leaving a crater six miles wide and wreaking global devastation.Īs the DART spacecraft nears Dimorphos - powered by solar arrays built by Redwire’s Deployable Space Systems, also in Goleta - Lister and his team are gearing up for the big moment. Those objects are big enough to flatten a city and cause mass casualties should they hit the surface. Sign up for Indy Today to receive fresh news from, in your inbox, every morning.Īstronomers estimate there are approximately 25,000 asteroids 500 feet or larger that have wandered outside our solar system’s asteroid belt - either pulled by the long reach of Jupiter’s incredible gravity or knocked out by a chance encounter with another asteroid - and are now lurking within a few million miles of Earth. In celestial terms, the Chelyabinsk asteroid was a mere pebble - just 60 feet in size - but the event was a stark reminder of the hazards above. The blast injured more than 1,600 people and caused an estimated $30 million in damage.
On the morning of February 15, 2013, an undetected asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, causing a shock wave that struck six cities around the region.
Even with LCO’s powerful telescopes, Lister noted, the two bodies appear as little more than a pinprick of light against the blackness of space.įor most laypeople, the $330 million question - the cost of the DART mission - is, why? Why expend so much money and energy on such a far-flung endeavor? Are asteroids really that big of a threat? As it turns out, yes. That allows Lister’s team to measure the regular variation in brightness of the system and, consequently, if and how that brightness changes once the test is complete. The Didymos-Dimorphos system is an “eclipsing binary,” Lister explained, meaning that from our vantage on Earth, Dimorphos regularly passes in front of and behind Didymos as it orbits. Tim Lister, an astronomer with NASA partner Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), headquartered in Goleta. While Dimorphos does not and will not pose any threat to Earth, it is the ideal crash-test dummy for such an undertaking, said Dr. This is NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, the world’s first attempt at asteroid deflection in the name of planetary defense. PT, a spacecraft the size of a vending machine launched last November from Vandenberg Space Force Base will slam into it at a screaming 14,000 mph and, if all goes according to plan, nudge the moonlet from its course. Little does Dimorphos know, on September 26 at 4:14 p.m.
Right now, Dimorphos, an asteroid moonlet slightly larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza, is quietly minding its own business 6.8 million miles from Earth, slowly orbiting its big brother, Didymos.
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