NASAs DART mission - What could go wrong?

NASA engineers are going to practice shifting the trajectory of an existing asteroid. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission has already launched. The 1,200-pound spacecraft will slam into the asteroid Dimorphous at 15,000 miles per hour. This test is a practice run, Dimorphous is not on a collision course with earth.

NASA DART mission link www.nasa.gov...

What happens if the deliberate collision splits the asteroid into multiple pieces that follow 2 different trajectories?

What happens if the new asteroid trajectory makes it collide with another asteroid or planet….setting off a cascade of events that endangers life on earth? I’m envisioning a cascade of collisions through the asteroid belt.

This just sounds like a really bad idea. Anyone who has played pool or marbles…knows that two objects colliding at high speeds can yield unexpected results. In this case both of the objects are an irregular shape, are moving at high speeds, and the composition of one of the objects (the asteroid) is a “guesstimate”. This “test” might make a big mess.

This sounds almost as bad as blowing up an out of commission satellite and creating a debris field around planet earth (Russia, the United States, China, and India have all done this). I don’t understand how scientists and engineers couldn’t anticipate that a debris field of shrapnel would be a hazard for other objects orbiting the earth. The scientists and engineers had to know it would be bad…they knew it would cause problems..,but they did it anyways.

If NASA can’t keep from making a mess in our own backyard (around planet earth)what is going to keep them from making a much larger mess when they crash a satellite into an asteroid?

Space debris article 11/17/2021. www.theatlantic.com...

a reply to: Buvvy

we call Bruce Willis

a reply to: Buvvy


Ummm…what could go wrong…?


Why…they could completely miss the intended target…by…inches…


You do know that this is just a practice run…on an asteroid that has no chance of being a threat to the old blue marble…Right…?

Also…there’s not enough kinetic energy in the…kill…shot…to significantly impact the target enough to bring it out of it’s orbit around the parent asteroid…


You should be thankful that anyone is even attempting to use deflection to change the orbit of asteroid bodies…in the event that one day such an effort might be needed to deflect a potential ELE from impacting our only current inhabited by humans rock…


I’m sure…given humanities penchant to birth the occasional megalomaniac…that there may be some future “Marco”…just itching to hurl rocks down the gravity well…


So it might be a nice idea to have the abilities to contradict such…before they’re actually needed…





YouSir

Ever play marbles with two grains of sand in the ocean?
a reply to: Buvvy

What they didn’t say was it was armed with a nuke 😈

This is a dry run for the one that is going to hit Earth.

a reply to: Smigg

They just found out the one destined would miss so they are going for course correction...

They succeed in deflecting it but it turns out in the wrong direction and hits mission control in Houston.

originally posted by: Terpene
a reply to: Smigg

They just found out the one destined would miss so they are going for course correction...

We should be so lucky.

N ot
A
S pace
A gency

originally posted by: Smigg
This is a dry run for the one that is going to hit Earth.

isn't it Apophis that is supposed to hit the earth somewhere in the Agean Sea in 2028 and it's the size of a mountain?

Cheers - Dave

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle

originally posted by: Smigg
This is a dry run for the one that is going to hit Earth.

isn't it Apophis that is supposed to hit the earth somewhere in the Agean Sea in 2028 and it's the size of a mountain?

Cheers - Dave

Yeah it's a mile long apparently, some are saying it will just miss and others are saying it will hit, April 13th 2028.

originally posted by: Buvvy
What happens if the new asteroid trajectory makes it collide with another asteroid or planet….setting off a cascade of events that endangers life on earth? I’m envisioning a cascade of collisions through the asteroid belt.

Ummm... not sure where you've been, but this has already happened in the past (skip to the 25 second mark)...