Are we ready to save Earth?: NASA purposely deflected an asteroid

We have seen ad nauseam in Hollywood movies that space crews are capable of preventing an asteroid from destroying the Earth, these are situations that only remain in the realm of fiction, but recently the POT made what was previously exclusive to cinema a reality, and without the help of Robert Duvall or Bruce Willis.

Pretending that the asteroid Dimorphos (a satellite of a larger asteroid called Didymos, about 109 million kilometers from Earth) was a danger to humanity, the POT He managed to divert its trajectory and in this way prevented it from “impacting” and ending humanity. How did he do it?

The POT deliberately launched the mission ship dart (the size of a refrigerator) against the asteroid on September 26. After the impact it managed to displace it and reduced its orbit in 32 minutes. It should be noted that the asteroid Dimorphos never posed a threat to Earth, which made space the perfect setting for a disaster drill.

“This is the perfect natural laboratory. We do this test when it’s not needed, on an asteroid that’s not a hazard, in case we ever need to and discover an asteroid that is a hazard.”said the DART program scientist at the POTTom Statler, to the Independent newspaper.

Even before the impact, scientists at the POT they estimated as successful that Dimorphos’s orbit changed between 73 seconds and 10 minutes.

Scientist Bill Nelson told the AFP agency that, with the 32 minutes obtained, “We show the world that POT she is serious as a defender of this planet.”

“It looks like a movie script. But it’s not Hollywood (…). This mission shows that NASA tries to be prepared for anything the universe can throw at us.”Nelson added.

What if a bigger asteroid shows up?

The planetary defense officer of the POTLindley Johnson, explained that DART has a specific size to have the desired effect on Dimorphos and that in the face of real danger, the situation should be faced according to the size of the threat.

“It would depend on the size of the asteroid how much we would need to hit it. In the case of the kinetic impactor, it probably needs to be bigger than Dart, and we could also hit it with multiple kinetic impactors.”Lindley explained.

Sherry Fieber-Beyer, an assistant professor of space studies at the University of North Dakota, estimated that a kinetic impactor would definitely work on a rocky-body asteroid or a large comet, but if the asteroid is iron and nickel “it’s not going to work.” function”.

However, the key for Fieber-Beyer is lead and deviation, no matter how small it may seem.

“If an object initially on a trajectory to impact smack in the middle of the face of the Earth, arrives just five minutes before or after, a potential disaster would become a near miss.”he stated.

No asteroids to threaten us

Almost 30,000 asteroids of all sizes have been cataloged in the vicinity of Earth, but none of them threaten our planet for the next 100 years, unless some are not known, according to the AFP agency.

Nearly all of those one kilometer or larger have been located, according to scientists. But they estimate that they only know about 40% of the asteroids that measure 140 meters or more, those capable of devastating an entire region. However, after the DART mission, scientists -and humanity in general- breathe a little easier.