NASA crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid tonight
 

NASA is about to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid

Watch tonight here at 7:14 NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV

NASA is set to slam a spacecraft into a little asteroid on Monday evening in an attempt to redirect it.

Why it matters: The first-of-it-kind mission — called DART — marks the first true test of whether or not NASA will one day be able to push a potentially dangerous asteroid off a collision course with Earth if the need should ever arise.

"It's quite frankly the first time that we are able to demonstrate that we have not only the knowledge of the hazards posed by these asteroids and comets that are left over from the formation of the solar system, but also have the technology that we could deflect one from a course inbound to impact the Earth," Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA, said during a press conference last week.

What's happening: DART's target is Dimorphos, an asteroid moonlet circling the larger asteroid Didymos. (Neither of these asteroids pose a threat to Earth.)

The probe is expected to collide with Dimorphos at 7:14pm ET on Monday.

Scientists will use other telescopes to measure just how much the impact throws off Dimorphos' orbit around Didymos. The Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope will also keep eyes on the system to see if they can observe the impact.

Mission managers should receive photos from the impactor as it makes its approach to Dimorphos up until it hits the asteroid.

The big picture: So far, city or planet destroying asteroids on collision courses with Earth have been relegated to blockbuster films.

But it's possible one of those large space rocks could one day be found heading toward our planet.
NASA's DART mission will provide key data to scientists and engineers about how to potentially scale up the technology to deflect an asteroid if it's ever needed.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1664205091.jpg

i live in SC. i happened to see this glow with a big contrail behind that did not look "normal"
i thought man that looks like a rocket. sure enough.

it was SOOO beautiful. the sky was crystal clear, the sun was down enough to make the sky a beautiful red sky but light enough to see it clearly.

Seems like pushing it would be more effective than crashing into it. I guess if you can get your projectile moving fast enough

i wonder if bruce willis was there tech advisor.

LaForge used a warp field envelope to alter an asteroids mass so that the Enterprise could move it.

If it won't budge it....use the Artemis
oh wait..it's not ready.

I hope this doesn't "butterfly effect" the rest of the solar system.

Interested to see if the amount of energy transfer is effective enough, or even perceptible on the mass of an asteroid.
We’ll see.

41K folks are viewing the live feed currently... I think I'll join them in a bit.

What's next.... a big azz cork to plug Yellowstone?

Silly wabbits :D

I'm watching.

At 6.5 million miles away, we now have “precision lock” on the target asteroid.

The image slowly getting bigger and bigger.

Live on the Discovery channel now.

That was amazing!

Boom!

Direct hit, but did it change the path of the asteroid ?

Yes indeed! Thanks for posting this thread and link :).

Dead center. Planetary Defense history was made.

I'm sure there will be follow up so time will tell.

Did anyone else see the Little Prince wide-eyed and waving his arms?

That was amazing. More so when you realize that the probe was self steering. Watching Didymos go from a pixilated image to high resolution of individual boulders in about 10 minutes gave me a real sense of its' speed. Now the science starts.

Very cool. Too bad there was not a video feed from another source to show the impact.

They should already already be able to tell if the asteroid path has changed.

I watched it on a live Fox News channel on YouTube, there was real time video as Dart got closer to impact. You could really see the make up of material that the asteroid was made of. Pretty neat stuff, but, not in the loop so, what is the goal here?

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They want to see if they can knock it slightly off course. If so, by how much.

They want the ability to hit a future killer asteroid and deflect it slightly so it misses earth.

Telescopes are studying the impact and will determine if the orbit of the smaller body has changed.

Nice shot!

Now let’s see ‘em do it with iron sights…

Thank you for the explanation.

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837 watching the live feed right now.... they're late to the "big show"....

Any word yet.... did it move the 'stroid?

As the post-crash data is analyzed, we have an observation of a Comet-like tail of debris following the asteroid. 6200 miles long!

“After DART crash, asteroid Dimorphos sports a tail of debris thousands of miles long”
https://www.space.com/dart-asteroid-impact-debris-tail-photo

So here’s a question… this was quite a ways a way… and they were able to predict (pinpoint) its exact trajectory years ago when they started planning for this.

Tell me again how we have the potential for an unexpected impact from an asteroid… seems like these things are pretty well mapped out. Seems like we would know years in advance if we were in danger.

Are there rogue asteroids? I’m asking because I don’t know.

There may be comets or asteroids headed for impact that "gubmint" knows can't be stopped or deflected. And in that case they may want to keep it under wraps to prevent a complete chaotic societal breakdown.

A fun tongue-in-cheek watch, but it will tickle your brain with what ifs:

<iframe width="884" height="497" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RbIxYm3mKzI" title="DON'T LOOK UP | Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence | Official Trailer | Netflix" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Asteroids or comets that have a predictable repeated orbit around our Sun, however elongated or elliptical, are well mapped. They have good regularity of travel that can be fairly accurately predicted.
The ‘rogue’ asteroids you mention would be the ones that simply pass through our solar system from wherever, to wherever. Or, if they do actually orbit our Sun, their period and shape of orbit is so large that we haven’t seen a full orbit yet, thus can’t predict their travel.

And check out this graphic showing the difference. The 2 asteroid belts within our solar system generally are not a threat because they stay (mostly) in their respective orbits. That matter never formed a planet.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1664923959.jpg

I hope it isn’t pissed.

MOST asteroids are completely unknown to us. We discover new ones daily, but that's a drop in the bucket.

When we do discover one, it takes several (10, 15, 20) observations of it across a decent percentage of it's orbit to get the parameters accurate enough to track the future path for the next several dozen years.

The ones of concern are the unknown ones, which are coming towards us within the next orbit or two, or even directly at us. We would have months, maybe 24 months at BEST, 6 months at worst to try to get enough data to pinpoint the path. Even then, we're in an uncertainty cone (like a hurricane), and you see how much that can change.

As for the secret government asteroids...the orbital data on interplanetary stuff is public domain, and maintained at the Minor Planet Center. Anyone can send in data points, and anyone can mine the data openly. A single observation wouldn't give you any orbital data at all (you need at least 3 separate observations to even BEGIN to calculate rough orbits), any and all independent astronomers who discover a new asteroid that night would have to consider any data warranted to secretly calling their congressperson instead of the MPC.

LOL.... Didn't work either..... "Beep, beeps" are still being detected!

Smashing Success! Congratulations NASA.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/11/nasa-dart-mission-asteroid-success/

Thanks for the update & link. So far, so good...:)

That is "just a movie" as realistic as James Bond, or X-men. Lots of amateurs in back yards all over the world look for them. The comet that struck Jupiter was found by non professionals. Shoemaker-Levy 9 is named for them.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/how-historic-jupiter-comet-impact-led-to-planetary-defense

It was the wake up call to NASA that it could happen to Earth.

We should just develop earth-based deflectors.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1665611780.jpg

That ejecta photo in fisher22’s link is cool.