<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/nasa" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA</a> announced Tuesday that according to data it obtained from a recent test in which the agency intentionally crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, it was successful in altering the motion of the asteroid, the first time a mankind has altered the motion of a celestial object.
The results from NASA&#8217;s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation were an important development from a defense perspective because the test was part of NASA&#8217;s creation of asteroid deflection technology that could be used to protect earth one day.
In a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-dart-mission-impact-changed-asteroid-s-motion-in-space">statement</a>, NASA explained what the mission was, the metrics that were used to define a successful mission, and the results:
<blockquote>Prior to DART’s impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit its larger parent asteroid, Didymos. Since DART’s intentional collision with Dimorphos on Sept. 26, astronomers have been using telescopes on Earth to measure how much that time has changed. Now, the investigation team has confirmed the spacecraft’s impact altered Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos by 32 minutes, shortening the 11 hour and 55-minute orbit to 11 hours and 23 minutes. This measurement has a margin of uncertainty of approximately plus or minus 2 minutes.
Before its encounter, NASA had defined a minimum successful orbit period change of Dimorphos as change of 73 seconds or more. This early data show DART surpassed this minimum benchmark by more than 25 times.</blockquote>
“All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. After all, it’s the only one we have,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us. NASA has proven we are serious as a defender of the planet. This is a watershed moment for planetary defense and all of humanity, demonstrating commitment from NASA&#8217;s exceptional team and partners from around the world.”
Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said that the result was an important step in understanding how asteroid deflection technology could be used in the future.
“As new data come in each day, astronomers will be able to better assess whether, and how, a mission like DART could be used in the future to help protect Earth from a collision with an asteroid if we ever discover one headed our way,” she said.
“DART has given us some fascinating data about both asteroid properties and the effectiveness of a kinetic impactor as a planetary defense technology,” said Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “The DART team is continuing to work on this rich dataset to fully understand this first planetary defense test of asteroid deflection.”

US-SPACE-NASA-DART

NASA’s Test Crash Into Asteroid Was 25X More Successful Than Benchmark Objective

NASA's Test Crash Into Asteroid Was 25X More Successful Than Benchmark Objective

Asteroid

NASA

Space

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/nasa">NASA</a> intentionally crashed an un-crewed vending machine-sized spacecraft into an asteroid Monday to test our defenses should a similar object ever threaten planet Earth.
What sounds like a rehashed plot of the late 90&#8217;s classic end-of-the-world drama &#8220;Armageddon,&#8221; or Netflix&#8217;s latest version of a doomsday story, &#8220;Don&#8217;t Look Up&#8221; — the national space agency took a giant leap in planetary defense for the first time in history by hurtling a spacecraft toward an asteroid known as Didymos, and it&#8217;s moonlet Dimorphos.
&#8220;We&#8217;re embarking on a new era of humankind, an era in which we potentially have the capability to protect ourselves from something like a dangerous, hazardous asteroid impact,&#8221; Lori Glaze, director of NASA&#8217;s Planetary Science Division, said according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/dart-nasa-asteroid-mission/index.html">CNN</a>. &#8220;What an amazing thing. We&#8217;ve never had that capability before.&#8221;
NASA&#8217;s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) officially became the world&#8217;s first mission to successfully test technology that would &#8220;defend earth against an incoming killer asteroid,&#8221; Bill Nelson, NASA&#8217;s 14th administrator, said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/SenBillNelson/status/1574416019199868930">video</a>.
&#8220;One of our main reasons at NASA that we exist is not only that space is the place,&#8221; Nelson said. &#8220;But we also look back at the home planet, and we tried to benefit life here on planet Earth.
&#8220;We only have one home, so we ought to take care of it,&#8221; he added.
Nelson said DART would soar at 15,000 miles an hour only to intersect the asteroid the size of an Egyptian pyramid at about 7 million miles away to slightly move its trajectory away from Earth.
DART initially launched in November 2021 with a briefcase-sized CubeSat designed by the Italian Space Agency attached to it to capture images and videos upon impact, according to CNN. Such images are expected to be streamed in the coming weeks and months.
Other space technology that captured the aftermath included the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, and NASA&#8217;s Lucy mission.
Space.com <a href="https://www.space.com/nasa-dart-asteroid-impact-preview">reports</a> neither Dimorphos nor Didymos pose a threat; the DART mission would not change that regardless of its outcome.
Still, the mission was meant to test the theory that the technique could be used for prevention in the event of an asteroid heading straight for Earth.
NASA officials in a news conference Monday said following the mission that there are more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids in all shapes and sizes, none of which are on a direct impact course with Earth at the moment.
Rep. Don Beyer, the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee chairman, dubbed the DART mission &#8220;a historic success.&#8221;
&#8220;The risk of impact from asteroids and other hazardous space objects is low, but the damage would be immense,&#8221; Beyer said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/RepDonBeyer/status/1574542355012931584">tweet</a> shortly after officials announced the mission&#8217;s success.
He added that &#8220;developing the capability to prevent impact is a key long-term objective.&#8221;

US-NASA-SPACE-DART

NASA Celebrates Successful Test Launch Of Spacecraft Technology Designed To Defend Earth From An ‘Incoming Killer Asteroid’

Italy

James Webb Telescope

SpaceX

A bus-sized <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/asteroid">asteroid</a> will make an unexpected and extremely close pass by Earth on Thursday, July 7.
According to calculations by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/nasa">NASA</a>, the asteroid, 2022 NF, will come within 56,000 miles (90,000km) of the Earth at its closest approach, approximately 23% of the average distance between the Earth and the Moon. Referred to by <a href="https://weather.com/en-IN/india/space/news/2022-07-07-look-out-for-bus-sized-asteroid-fly-by-on-july-8-early-morning">The Weather Channel</a> as a “master of hide-and-seek,” 2022 NF was hitherto unknown until July 4, when it was discovered using data from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (<a href="http://legacy.ifa.hawaii.edu/research/Pan-STARRS.shtml">Pan-STARRS</a>), a series of cameras and telescopes based in Hawaii and specializing in the detection and tracking of near-Earth objects (NEOs). Researchers analyzed that data to calculate the asteroid’s trajectory and approximate size, estimating that the object is between 18-41 feet (5.5-12.5m) long.
The asteroid does not fit NASA’s criteria for “potentially hazardous asteroid,” and the object is small enough that it would almost certainly burn up in the atmosphere if it entered Earth’s gravity well. “Potentially hazardous asteroids” typically must measure at least 460 feet (140m) long and pass within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of the Earth at some point in its orbit. NASA and its international colleagues track thousands of NEOs, although only a handful of the larger ones are considered potentially dangerous if their trajectories change.
According to NASA, “Only once every few million years, an object large enough to threaten Earth&#8217;s civilization comes along.”
In November of 2021, NASA launched a spacecraft called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which is expected to collide with the 525-foot-long Dimorphous Asteroid in Autumn of 2022. The impact should leave the asteroid intact, but may alter the course of its orbit, and the mission is meant to determine how effective future asteroid deflection efforts may be, should the need arise.
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="alignnone wp-image-406065" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022NF_poster-300x203.jpg" alt="" width="613" height="415" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/07/2022NF_poster-300x203.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/07/2022NF_poster-851x576.jpg 851w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/07/2022NF_poster-768x520.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/07/2022NF_poster-1536x1040.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/07/2022NF_poster.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 613px) 100vw, 613px" /></div>
According to NASA’s small body database, 2022 NF will orbit the Sun once every 6 years.
The Virtual Telescope Project is live-streaming 2022 NF’s flyby of Earth throughout the day as a belated celebration of “Asteroid Day,” which took place a little over a week ago on June 30, and <a href="https://theskylive.com/2022nf-info">theskylive.com</a> is providing updates on its location in the sky throughout the day.

Asteroid Approaches Earth

Unexpected Asteroid Passing Really Close By Earth

Newly Discovered Asteroid Makes Close Pass By Earth

Moon

Scientists have developed a new tool to save the world from asteroids that could wreck the planet.
Heretofore, asteroids have been reported with the use of telescopes, but now scientists are using an algorithm on computers to find asteroids among billions of dots of light around the universe whose trajectory threatens earth, possibly permitting the human race to deflect them years before their path intersects with ours.
“This is the modern way of doing astronomy,” Ed Lu of the B612 Foundation stated.
“Researchers financed by B612 applied cutting-edge computational might to years-old images — 412,000 of them in the digital archives at the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, or NOIRLab — to sift asteroids out of the 68 billion dots of cosmic light captured in the images,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/science/asteroids-algorithm-planetary-defense.html">The New York Times</a> reported.
The algorithm is called “Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery” (THOR). It is run on a cloud-based astrodynamics platform named “Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping” (ADAM).
“Discovering and tracking asteroids is crucial to understanding our solar system, enabling development of space and protecting our planet from asteroid impacts,” Lu <a href="https://www.washington.edu/news/2022/05/31/asteroid-discovery/">asserted</a>.
“With THOR running on ADAM, any telescope with an archive can now become an asteroid search telescope,” he continued. “We are using the power of massive computation to enable not only more discoveries from existing telescopes, but also to find and track asteroids in historical images of the sky that had gone previously unnoticed because they were never intended for asteroid searches.”
Up to 60% of asteroids near Earth measuring at least 460 feet in diameter remain unseen. Possible damage from an <a href="https://www.planetary.org/articles/will-apophis-hit-earth">asteroid hitting earth</a> could equal over 1,000 megatons of TNT, the equivalent of tens to hundreds of nuclear weapons.
But now the B612 Foundation, working with University of Washington graduate student Joachim Moeyens and astronomy professor Mario Juric, as well as colleagues at the university’s Institute for Data Intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology, created an algorithm permitting them to identify lights in space as possible asteroids and determine which ones seen on different nights are the same asteroid, thus allowing them to be tracked.
“Tracklets” consist of the observation of moving objects through one night. The algorithm the scientists created “constructs a test orbit that corresponds to the observed point of light, assuming a certain distance and velocity. It then calculates where the asteroid would be on subsequent and previous nights. If a point of light shows up there in the data, that could be the same asteroid,” the Times explained.
“It’s one of the coolest applications I’ve seen,” Scott Penberthy, director of applied artificial intelligence at Google, enthused.
“I think it’s awesome,” said Matthew Payne, director of the Minor Planet Center, echoed. “I think it’s hugely interesting and it also allows us to make good use of the archival data that already exists.”

Near-Earth asteroid, artwork

Saved From Armageddon: Scientists’ New Algorithm Warns Us Of Unseen Asteroids Heading Our Way

Scientists’ New Algorithm Warns Us Of Unseen Asteroids Heading Toward Earth

algorithm

Computer

Menu

Asteroid

NASA’s Test Crash Into Asteroid Was 25X More Successful Than Benchmark Objective

NASA Celebrates Successful Test Launch Of Spacecraft Technology Designed To Defend Earth From An ‘Incoming Killer Asteroid’

Unexpected Asteroid Passing Really Close By Earth

Saved From Armageddon: Scientists’ New Algorithm Warns Us Of Unseen Asteroids Heading Our Way