DART: Let’s Save The World

If you’ve learned astronomy, you would know about asteroids, big pieces of rock sailing around in space. While they’re in outer space, they are harmless. However, when they get too close to Earth, some could cause some significant damage.

Formed from the leftovers when the Solar System took shape, asteroids could sometimes get confused with comets. However, comets have a “tail” trailing behind, made from ice, rock, and sand altogether. Meanwhile, asteroids are mostly larger. And most recently, two asteroids have caught the attention of the space agency NASA. These asteroids are a pair, one orbiting the other. The larger one, Didymos, means “twin” in Greek, and its smaller counterpart is Dimorphos, or sometimes Didymos B. Both get classified as potentially hazardous and near-Earth objects.

So what does NASA want to do with these asteroids? It wasn’t necessary, but NASA decided it wanted to test out some latest technology. The DART mission, or Double Asteroid Redirection Test, launched on Nov 24th of this year from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This mission sent a spacecraft deliberately crashing into Dimorphos. That is all in the hope of getting the moon off course, which will happen in September 2022.

OK, so in Hollywood science fiction movies, there have been many such incidents. It’s another ordinary day until “boom,” asteroids start blowing up around street corners. Then everything is panic, with scientists and engineers and everyone trying to save the planet from disaster. Some cities don’t make it in the end. However, Earth gets saved. That may be the case in movies, though NASA is trying to make that come true.

You see, asteroids are a common phenomenon in outer space. An estimated 1.1 to 1.9 million asteroids with a diameter larger than one kilometer are orbiting the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. And there are millions of smaller ones too. That gives you a more than an expected chance that one would start flying toward Earth someday. That is the main reason why NASA wanted to launch the DART mission. It’s to prevent further disasters from happening in the future, by developing what we need now.

Maybe you don’t see asteroids every day. But there are dozens of smaller meteoroids and comets blasting into Earth day by day. Meteoroids and comets mostly crash into deserts and more in oceans. Though occasionally, they land in someone’s backyard. However, it wasn’t so lucky for the dinosaurs. They existed for millions of years. That is, before getting wiped out of existence suddenly by an asteroid about 10 to 15 kilometers across. That is along with hundreds of other species, adding up to 75% of all species existing at that time.

So to not let anything like that ever happen again, the DART could be potentially the thing that will protect humanity against the unknown in the vastness of the universe. Maybe just that small of a device could send the course of history spinning. That is the end of this production from the New News Newsminute. Thank you, and remember to subscribe and share this article with the people you know. Hey DART, it’s time to save the world!