The first planetary defense mission

On September 26, we hit an asteroid with every intention of damaging it, in fact, it is partly because of the dinosaurs, because we know that one of the causes of their extinction, if not the main one, was the impact of a huge asteroid in what is now Mexico Yucatan. Although other impacts have recently been discovered that could indicate that it was not just one impact but several, over several million years the ones that wiped out the dinosaurs and we do not want to end up like this and this mission is the first step in developing a system defense against space threats. The impact was broadcast live from a camera that accompanied the spacecraft and both ground-based telescopes and the James web captured the spectacular impact. The images are impressive and I'll show you after the break.

The plan was to send a probe to an asteroid with the sole purpose of colliding with it at a very high speed, it is called a kinetic impact, to find out how much we can alter its orbit, by the way, Dark, which stands for redirection test double asteroid also means dart which makes a lot of sense because hitting a moving asteroid 11 million kilometers away with a tiny probe weighing just over half a tonne sounds like a very well shot dart that hit the smallest target in the history. The European space agency was originally going to accompany Dart with its “aim” mission, which stands for “asteroid impact mission” but also means aiming, that is, the dart and aiming missions, what an ingenuity. Although "aim" was canceled and replaced by the Hera mission, which will be the one that will closely investigate the impact caused by Dart in dimorphs, scheduled to be launched in 2024. With little more than half a ton, Dart was equipped with conventional propellants and 50 kilograms of hydrazine as propylene, as a precautionary measure in case it failed in the first attempt to collide with the asteroid, it also carried a new highly efficient ion engine, which with small amounts of xenon gas and electric current obtained with its solar panels would have been enough to guide the ship to a second attempt two years later, that is to be warned, but that was not necessary.

With surgical precision he traveled for 9 months in interplanetary space to meet the binary system of asteroids Didimos, binary means that it is made up of two, Didimos is an asteroid 780 meters in diameter that has a small dimorphic companion that orbits it like a small moon This small asteroid of 160 meters in diameter was ideal for the experiment, it has the precise measure of the asteroids that we want to start learning to deflect in case we discover that their orbit takes them on a collision course with the earth, on September 11, 15 days before impact as the Dart spacecraft made minor adjustments to its trajectory to hit the asteroid dead center. A second ship called LiciaCube made by the Italian space agency, would separate from Darth and slow down enough to see the crash from behind so they could document it with their cameras, your cameras, by the way, are called look and read.

A few hours before the impact, the automatic tracking mode was activated, which is not very different from the technology used in anti-ballistic missiles that are capable of intercepting and destroying enemy missiles in the air before reaching their target, in this case It would be responsible for keeping the ship on course to hit the asteroid right in the center, while traveling at 6.6 kilometers per second. The images of the approach were broadcast live, although Claro with a delay of 30 seconds, because that is how long it takes for the signal to reach such a distance, Dividemos leaves the frame and Dimorfo quickly grows until Boom! The last image is interrupted because it was the moment in which the ship was destroyed, but the previous one allows us to see the surface of the asteroid, a pile of stacked rocks united only by gravity that attracts them to each other.

LiciaCube the other little spacecraft was able to capture all this from behind, the volume of material ejected by the impact is greater than what scientists had predicted, the debris was in fact seen by several ground-based telescopes such as the one above located in Hawaii. In a few weeks we will have the first studies of the new dimorphic orbit that will give us information on the feasibility of a kinetic impact to deflect asteroids that could collide with the earth.

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