NASA Destroy asteroid
NEWSLINE PAPER,-
There are 25,000 asteroids, about 460 feet long, flying in space near Earth. In the future, if no action is taken to stop it, an asteroid no bigger than a football stadium will hit the planet.The power of the explosion is expected to destroy a city like a non-radioactive nuclear bomb.
One way to stop them from hitting Earth is to change its course by hitting it with a spacecraft.In September 2022, to test this technique of deflection, a van-sized spacecraft crashed into a 170-meter-long near-Earth asteroid named Dimorphos at a speed of 14,000 miles per hour.
The impact test successfully shifted the orbit of the spacecraft. DART, NASA's double-asteroid redirection test mission, was the first planetary defense experiment to be conducted by mankind.It was praised as a great success but produced some surprising side effects.
The demonstration suggests that a kinetic impact can reverse a dangerous asteroid if it is on a collision path with Earth.However, a new study published in the 2024 Planetary Science Journal shows that the impact not only changes the movement of asteroids but also their shape.
The asteroid hit produced a bunch of large rocks that were found surrounding Dimorphos a few months after the impact.These relatively small, large rocks do not pose a threat to the Earth, but scientists wonder where the rocks will end.A recent 2024 study published in Astrophysics at Cornell University has given some answers to the estimates of the collision rock falls.Carefully, the researchers simulated different ways these massive rocks orbited the sun over the next 20,000 years.
(Newsline Paper Teams)