Europe and US teaming up for asteroid deflection mission
In a 2nd September 2019 press release by the European Space Agency, it is reported that :-
Quote:
Originally Posted by ESA, 2 Sept 2019
Asteroid researchers and spacecraft engineers from the US, Europe and around the world will gather in Rome next week to discuss the latest progress in their common goal: an ambitious double-spacecraft mission to deflect an asteroid in space, to prove the technique as a viable method of planetary defence.
This combined mission is known as the Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment, or AIDA for short. Its purpose is to deflect the orbit of the smaller body of the double Didymos asteroids between Earth and Mars through an impact by one spacecraft. Then a second spacecraft will survey the crash site and gather the maximum possible data on the effect of this collision.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ESA
NASA’s contribution to AIDA, the Double Asteroid Impact Test, or DART spacecraft, is already under construction for launch in summer 2021, to collide with its target at 6.6 km/s in September 2022. Flying along with DART will be an Italian-made miniature CubeSat called LICIACube (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids) to record the moment of impact.
Thanks Garry.
Sounds wasteful. I thought the blow it up or similar approach was looked upon unfavorably. It think it is the Myth Buster mentality ruling research here...
Alex
Thanks Garry.
Sounds wasteful. I thought the blow it up or similar approach was looked upon unfavorably. It think it is the Myth Buster mentality ruling research here...
Alex
Hi Alex,
When you read the story, certainly the plan is not to blow anything up.
The impactor will only have a tiny amount of mass compared to the 160m
diameter rock but travelling at 6km/s it should have enough momentum to
create an impact crater and create a small deflection which they will
measure with a second spacecraft.
When you think about it, ideally you don't want too much debris flying
off when the two collide, but instead you would hope the asteroid
would fully absorb most of the energy in order to deflect it by the maximum
amount the energy provides.
They hope to alter Didymos's orbit by about half a millimeter per second.
The spacecraft are apparently powered by solar energy arrays that
provide propulsion to an electric ion engine.
The problem here as I see it, is one of mankind's arrogance in thinking a mission like this may not eventually result in disastrous unintended consequences. Sure you change it's motion slightly, and then it bumps something it may not have ever hit, say twenty years later, which causes something else, etc. How far out have they modelled all the consequences?
The problem here as I see it, is one of mankind's arrogance in thinking a mission like this may not eventually result in disastrous unintended consequences. Sure you change it's motion slightly, and then it bumps something it may not have ever hit, say twenty years later, which causes something else, etc. How far out have they modelled all the consequences?
I am sure they would have done their homework.
Orbital mechanics etc is a well studied discipline a proven by the numerous
Space craft plying the the inner solar system over the years.
Remember the old "for every action there is a reaction" and this can be measured to just about the enth degree.
By the way they have sent over the last ten years a few impactors into comets and asteroids,so would have some idea as to what is required and how it is carried out.
The creation of a hole in the ground fits my definition of blowing things up just a little bit.
And I was thinking that with low gravity ( which I merely assume) any material displaced should be of concern..perhaps not with this exercise but come the day we are impacting something to prevent a future collision the possible distribution of material would seem undesirable and so although this is only a small scale experiment one could expect it would need upscaling to head off the sort of collisions we will determine as having potential for extinction type events...And this is an asteroid which upon my understanding are likely to be smaller than comets which may offer the biggest threat...my point so you won't have to wait any longer is...an asteroid probably has little risk of falling to pieces on such an impact whereas I "feel" (in a scientific sort of way) that a comet will generally be much more prone to break up...
I just wish they had asked me first.
Anyways on the positive I am very very pleased that attention and energy is going in this direction.
In my view the threat of an impact is ignored and yet such has greater potential to end our world than climate change or an epidemic of severe head aches.
One reason why I think we need to know about the age of the recently found creator under the ice in Greenland is not to see it shore up any hypothesis re mega fauna extinction but to know that we had such a large life changing impact in effect "yesterday"...as we know stuff is out there and yet we happily think it will never happen to us...that mentality is like building near a volcano or on a fault line and thinking that eruptions and earthquakes only happened in the olden days.
I have called for the construction of battle stars many times.
Huge colonies ..think mega international space station with hydroponic gardens and lots of guns...where we can shuffle off (shuttle off?) all the folk obsessed with wars and military mentality in general so they can intercept the various aliens hoards that will at any moment invade..it's no good saying we should build battle stars once they have attacked..but these battle stars could also head off all the things that could impact the Earth...I will draw up some plans after dinner. Probably start them off as prisons as that has worked in the past to get people to somewhere no one wants to be...
The problem here as I see it, is one of mankind's arrogance in thinking a mission like this may not eventually result in disastrous unintended consequences. Sure you change it's motion slightly, and then it bumps something it may not have ever hit, say twenty years later, which causes something else, etc. How far out have they modelled all the consequences?
I agree...think how many times you have lost at pool because you sunk the white when potting the black.
Alex
In a 4 minute read today at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) Spectrum magazine web site, Ned Potter reports on
how DART is about to impact on Monday, Sept. 26 at 23:14 UTC
which corresponds to Tuesday, Sep. 27 at 09:15 AEST, adjusting for
light time.
I'm quite interested to see how this goes, and have been following the mission and it's progression. However while I do share some of the concerns about consequences, my knowledge of the astrophysics and potential orbital mechanics involved is minimal at best. In cases like this, I have to trust to the experts.
NASA Press Release for next week.
The Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment mission to deflect the orbit of the smaller body of the double Didymos asteroids between Earth and Mars through an impact by one spacecraft has failed.
Initial reports indicate that due to a programming error has resulted in the probe soft landing on the asteriod.
The DART impact dust plume has been seen from Earth
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob King, Duluth News Tribune
These are some of the first photos of the expanding impact plume in the Didymos-Dimorphos binary asteroid system taken within 14 minutes of the DART impact on Sept. 26 with a 12-inch telescope.
Images were made by Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project (Italy) and Berto Monard, Klein Karoo Observatory (South Africa). It's pretty incredible that the dust from the impact was visible in photographs taken with a modest-sized telescope from Earth. The asteroid pair was 7 million miles away at the time. The cloud continues to expand into space — it must be huge!
