The United States, with the help of Europe, has conducted an experiment in which a spacecraft crashes into a space rock. The mission DART, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, aims to test whether blasting a space rock if necessary is possible. In this way humanity can be saved in the future from destruction and destruction by the impact of an asteroid.
DART is the first test to see if knocking out a space rock works. The probe was launched from California last November and struck the moon rock Dimorphos, a more than 160 meters large moon that lies 11 million kilometers away, on the night of Monday to Tuesday at 01:14 a.m. Dutch time. of the earth. That’s pretty close, which makes it easy to get there. In addition, the rock is easily visible from Earth with telescopes.
The impact is intended to knock Dimorphos into a slightly shorter orbit around the rock, Didymos. Dimorphos is the moon of this rock. Earlier this month, the DART unleashed an Italian satellite, which should track the impact directly from the front row. European telescopes are also watching from Earth to track the course of Dimorphos, and in 2024 the European satellite Hera should go to the asteroids to get a closer look at what has changed.
The experiment does not pose any danger to the Earth, the American space agency NASA emphasized in advance. In any case, humanity is safe from space danger for the time being. Billions of asteroids and comets revolve around the sun. A few tens of thousands of them could one day pose a threat to Earth, but they won’t come anywhere near us for at least the next 100 years.