NASA’s ‘Armageddon’-style asteroid deflection mission takes off in November

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From TechCrunch.com:
"NASA has a launch date for that most Hollywood of missions, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which is basically a dry run of the movie “Armageddon.” Unlike the film, this will not involve nukes, oil rigs or Aerosmith, but instead is a practical test of our ability to change the trajectory of an asteroid in a significant and predictable way.

The DART mission, managed by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (!), involves sending a pair of satellites out to a relatively nearby pair of asteroids, known as the Didymos binary. It’s one large-ish asteroid, approximately 780 meters across — that’s Didymos proper — and a 160-meter “moonlet” in its orbit."

https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/04/nasas ... -november/

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[GCoyote]

It would have been better with Aerosmith.

[Graeme1858]

There was a recent podcast I listened to about this, Greenwich Royal Observatory I think. It's an interesting mission. There was a lot of thought that went into choosing an asteroid whose orbit could be changed without creating another near Earth asteroid threat! Hence a small one orbiting a bigger one was chosen.

Here's an ESA article:

https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Her ... _asteroid2

Regards

Graeme

[helicon]

Hopefully it doesn't get deflected toward Earth!

[GCoyote]

The plan sounds pretty safe. Just enough of a nudge to make measurements. Not enough to change the overall orbit.