Posted on Nov 7, 2020

Why Are NASA & SpaceX RAMMING An Asteroid?

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As I was seeking some music to post I came across a science video which I found quite interesting... It involves a mission to try and move a mini-moon of DIDYMOS (Twin), DIMORPHOS...Which is about 100 meters in diameter, to some change in orbit... An experiment that will determine if we (humans) can cause a small change in its orbit characteristics... If successful, then we will know if we can move a much larger object out of its path to hit Earth and send it hurtling away in a different orbit where it will not come close to Earth... It is quite interesting and is diagrammatically pretty accurate...

IN essence, as stated by "Smallstars", SpaceX will be launching NASA's DART mission to the asteroid system Didymos to give Dimorphos (Didymos's moon) a ramming.

I hope you find it as interesting as I did...
Kerry
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Edited >1 y ago

Posted >1 y ago

Responses: 7

SPC Douglas Bolton

Posted >1 y ago

Much needed

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Sgt (Join to see)

>1 y

Indeed, Doug...

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Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen

Posted >1 y ago

Great video, but why does it look like spaceship heading towards a walnut! :-))

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Sgt (Join to see)

>1 y

There are two objects, One is the main asteroid named DIDYMOS and its mini-moon, called DIMORPHOS... DIDYMOS is about 780 meters across and DIMORPHOS is about 160 meters across. They use the smaller one to slam into with a certain amount of collision impact... The test is not to see if we can move a giant asteroid, but if we can move the smaller minimoon... Two objects with cameras will be jettisoned to take pictures of the minimoon and the resulting crater... Telescopes will measure the small change in movement of the minimoon and If we can move its orbit around the main asteroid, we will know whether we can move a much larger asteroid with a much larger collision payload... The video, in my view, does a pretty good job of explaining the detail... I hope I clarified the scenario, Jack...

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