NASA Will Crash Spacecraft into Asteroid

Most space scientists probably would not want to crash their spacecraft. However, scientists working with NASA’s Dart spacecraft have a mission to destroy it.

The Dart spacecraft, which cost about $330m will crash into an asteroid about 11 million kilometers above the Indian Ocean Monday night. The spacecraft will be completely destroyed, but the mission is to defend Earth.

The Dart is an experiment to understand if asteroids can be deflected. If an asteroid is going to hit Earth, scientists want to know if we can move it so it goes around the planet.

There are always telescopes checking the skies above Earth, so scientists hope that we can detect a dangerous asteroid. Catriona McDonald, a PhD student at Warwick University, says that pushing the asteroid is much safer than blowing it up, like in Hollywood movies.

The Dart mission launched from a US Space Force base in California in November 2021. On Tuesday at about 12:14am UK time, the spacecraft will collide with the asteroid. The collision will be recorded by a camera on Dart and two smaller spacecrafts nearby.

Scientists carefully planned the mission so Dart does not accidentally push Dimorphos, the asteroid, towards Earth. Dimorphos is about 160 meters wide.

Prof Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer and member of the Dart mission science team at Edinburgh University says that there is no danger in this mission.

Astronomers will use telescopes on Earth to observe the asteroid before and after Dart collides with it. Scientists will then try to understand how much Dimorphos moved or slowed down after the collision. 

Astronomers track around 30,000 asteroids and comets that pass close to Earth. They do not think any large ones will hit Earth in the next couple of hundred years.