NASA’s DART mission successfully shoved an asteroid by Lily Scott

 Lily Scott

“NASA’s DART mission successfully shoved an asteroid” 

This Science News article describes the newest, biggest breakthrough in space- for the first time ever, a man made object has successfully changed the course of an asteroid. On September 26, NASA’s DART spacecraft made contact with the astroid Dimorphos at a leisurely 22,500 kilometers per hour. DART- or as it stands for, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test- far overacheived it’s aims for the experiment. NASA had planned to shorten Dimorphos’s orbit around the larger astroid Didymos by a mere 73 seconds. Instead the orbit was shortened by 32 minutes, going from 11 hours and 55 minutes to 11 hours and 23 minutes. Although neither astroid’s orbit posed any hazard to Earth, this test proves that scientists could figure out how to redirect those that could endanger our planet. Possible future planetary defence mechanisms include the soon to be built ‘Near Object Earth Surveryor’, which will wawrn us of asteroids coming towards Earth. 

Article & first picture link

Second picture link

1. Could the accuracy of DART be improved upon?

2. How could we create the force required to fully eject an astroid from the Earth’s orbit?

The film Don’t Look Up focuses on the topic of astroid-Earth collision. Do you think this possible threat is a legitment reason for worry?