Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

Humanity’s most curious minds could not be contained within this planet’s sphere, so we began travelling to look for more, for anything that’s beyond.

At first, we were obsessed with aliens and UFOs. Still placing our belief in such probable meeting in future, we have turned more of our energies in delivering the needs of this planet.

Facilitating the Internet connectivity to uncanny regions, monitoring forests, livelihoods, nature and every form of reconnaissance appeared more rational and unexplored than the very cosmic uncertainties.

But wherever there is human interference, a correction is required in due time.

And in the process of quenching the insatiable thirst of human knowledge, we launched a plethora of satellites, travelling at all speeds, at all distances from Earth.

The satellites, one used for a purpose, in their lifetime became redundant and be declared as space junk or space debris.

The satellites those once garnered huge praises and made headlines, may soon become the worry of scientists only to be cleared and shot down as they pose danger to Earth and its other treasures in orbit.

But not only these artificial pieces are dangerous, instead there is always an impending threat to Earth from the rocky remnants of an early formation of the solar system nearly 4.6 billion years ago.

These minor planets, orbiting the Sun, are called Asteroids.

In actuality, these are confined within a class of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), those at times, may reach within 48 million kilometers (30 million miles to the planet).

Keeping in mind the very transformation they can provide on the face of Earth or its beings, NASA has launched a mission by the name DART – Double Asteroid Redirection Test, to consciously smash its own spacecraft into an incoming asteroid.

Based on proof-of-concept to stop any space rock big enough to endanger life on Earth, the complete $330 million mission got launched on a SpaceX’s rocket.

NASA’s interests lie around objects larger than 140 meters (460 feet) in size, which can destroy entire cities or produce an effect similar to that of a nuclear bomb.

This launch has been intended to move Dimorphos, a “minor moon” from its normal path circling around a much larger asteroid called Didymos, by about 160 meters (525 feet).

DART, equivalent to the size of a large fridge, will fly off to Dimorphos at a speed more than 24,000 kilometers per hour (15,000 miles per hour).

It is composed of sophisticated instruments those can be used for navigation and imaging, including the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube).

LICIACube is designed by the Italian Space Agency, just to watch the crash and its aftermath.

“What we’re trying to learn is how to deflect a threat”, explains NASA’s one of the top Scientists.

This will happen a long after 2050s when the binary asteroid system will just be 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from Earth, the closer they ever get.

While we may have heard about Dinosaur’s extinction because of a cosmic body hit approximately 80 million years ago, this is mostly classified as Science Fiction. Here’s why!

He explains further: “The chances of getting hit again by an asteroid is far from science fiction. Asteroids 100 meters and greater are a threat to the Earth, and we need to quantify our deflection capability to these threats.”

This happens because although there is a bleak chance of either of these 10,000 bodies hitting in upcoming 100 years but our scientists still believe around 15,000 more such objects those remain undiscovered.

Nevertheless, based on a recent research by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), the asteroid responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs might have originated from the outer half of the solar system’s main asteroid belt.

On its contact with Earth, the asteroid wiped out entire species of the dinosaurs, and also nearly 75 per cent of the planet’s other animal species. Here is a glimpse of what Elon Musk has to say:

The project, scarce hits yet something hidden:

It has another purpose, to simulate experiments for the Scientific community in real time, something that a lab-based miniature models won’t render.

As per NASA’s Scientists, the Didymos-Dimorphos system is an “ideal natural laboratory”.

This is due to the fact that Earth-based telescopes can easily measure brightness variations exhibited by the duo and estimate the correct time Dimorphos takes to orbit its big brother.

The Scientist clarifies: “Didymos system is not a threat to Earth… we need to be prepared should we ever be threatened by one of these enormous bodies emerging from the void of space”.

However, there are various opacities, like no idea of how much energy will be transferred by the impact made by DART on the moonlet.

This is because of dearth of information regarding the internal composition and porosity of moonlet ‘Dimorphos’.

“Every time we show up at an asteroid, we find stuff we don’t expect”.

“The CubeSat is going to give us, we hope, the shot – the most spectacular image of DART’s impact and the ejecta plume coming off the asteroid. That will be a truly historic, spectacular image”.

DART is one of the latest of several NASA missions in past few years those aim to deal with asteroids or any other cosmic object coming towards us.

NASA has recently launched a probe to be sent to Trojan asteroid clusters orbiting near Jupiter, and the OSIRES-REx is being welcomed back to Earth after it collected a sample from a celebrated asteroid called Bennu.

By Alaina Ali Beg

I am a lover of all arts and therefore can dream myself in all places where the World takes me. I am an avid animal lover and firmly believes that Nature is the true sorcerer.

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