Watching a spacecraft collide with an asteroid to change its course.. It might be a science fiction movie scene, but it would be a real job, in reality.
This mission comes through the mission of the spacecraft “Dart” colliding with the asteroid “Demorphos”, and it can be watched live starting at 03:13 am on Tuesday, UAE time, via the US Space Agency’s YouTube channel.
This experiment, conducted by the American agency, aims to test the possibility of defending the planet when dangerous objects approach it, by directing a vehicle that collides with these objects to change its course away from Earth.
The asteroid “Demorphos” chosen by NASA for the experiment does not constitute any danger to the planet, but the collision of the vehicle with it will give an indication of what can be done when there is a real danger to the planet.
The asteroid “Demorphos” revolves like a clock every 11 hours and 55 minutes around a larger asteroid near Earth called “Dedimos”. Its rotation period is less than a few minutes, estimated at ten minutes.
The spacecraft “DART” took a period of 10 months to reach the asteroid, and its speed at the moment of collision will be 22,000 kilometers per hour, and then the asteroid will be 11 million kilometers from Earth.
And the American Space Agency broadcasts, through its YouTube channel, an experiment directing the spacecraft to collide with the asteroid, and at the moment of the collision, the broadcast will stop, but a smaller spacecraft nearby will monitor, and will send images to Earth in the following days, and telescopes on all seven continents, in addition to space telescopes such as “James” Webb also watched the collision and its followingmath for weeks, with the aim of accurately measuring how the asteroid’s path changed.
