You may have seen in Hollywood movies how the earth gets saved by movie stars going and blowing up asteroids with nuclear bombs and missiles. Hopefully you know that’s not the truth and that’s not what would be don’t in case of an actual asteroid was to be seen coming towards the earth.
NASA proved to the world how the agency can prevent incoming asteroids from entering our atmosphere and falling on Earth. The idea was not to blow the asteroid up but to simply deviate its course and changing its trajectory.
On Monday a spacecraft was deployed to fly towards an asteroid and rammed into the asteroid to push it of its course. Of course, the spacecraft was completed obliterated on impact but that was part of the plan.
The asteroid names Dimorphos was and egg-shaped object with a rocky surface was at a distance of & million miles away and posed no threat to our planet. This was simply a test conducted by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) to conduct the first ever planetary defense technology.
History has made it pretty evident that when a large asteroid has hit our planet, we have suffered the effects for centuries. It has caused an ice age; it is said to have been the cause of the extinction of dinosaurs and of water levels rising and causing cities to submerge under water.
With NASA’s new DART technology, we would have a more secure planetary defense system and can prevent asteroids from hitting our plant and protecting our planet from great destruction.
After about two months we will be able to get a full report on how the test was conducted and whether the impact of the spacecraft was a success or failure.
Photo Credits: https://www.npr.org/