As Earth’s billionaires race to get humans living in space, NASA is doing some landscaping in preparation: Late tonight, the agency will launch a mission to slam a spacecraft into an asteroid and alter its course.
It’s NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a trial run for dealing with Earth-threatening asteroids without Bruce Willis having to sacrifice it all. DART will launch out of California around 10pm local time, via a SpaceX Falcon 9.
If all goes well, the 59-foot DART craft will bonk into a 530-foot asteroid called Dimorphos next September at a speed of 15,000 mph. The goal is to slow Dimorphos down and alter its orbit around another, larger asteroid called Didymos.
What did Dimorphos ever do to us? Nothing. It’s a wrong-place, wrong-time situation—the asteroid, which isn’t projected to threaten Earth, is simply at the ideal distance for observation.
Any other asteroid cleanup ideas? Well, aside from hiring an elite team of drillers, sure. One idea, known as a “gravity tractor,” would dispatch large spacecraft to clamp onto asteroids, altering their masses and therefore changing their trajectories.—MK
