NASA: Mars helicopter is set to fly once more exceeding all expectations
The NASA Mars helicopter was supposed to fly five times in 30...
According to NASA officials, they are planning to smash an asteroid with a spacecraft, set to launch late Tuesday from California. This is designed to provide insight into how humanity can avoid a collision with a planet-killing space rock.
Lori Glaze, NASA’s director of planetary science, said in a press conference that a spacecraft will attempt to smash with an asteroid for the first time, next fall as an experiment to show how such a space body may be deflected if it were headed towards Earth.
The researcher said “I feel that once we’ve completed this test, we are going to learn an incredible amount and be so much more prepared in the future if, indeed, a potential asteroid could pose a threat.”
But NASA Officials are not sure if it will learn everything, since it needs to defend Earth against such a deadly strike.
NASA’s DART mission, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is set to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 10:20 p.m. PST Tuesday.
Read more: NASA: seeks innovative ideas for a nuclear reactor on the moon
The Falcon 9 rocket will either launch at that moment or wait for another launch window over a period of 84 days.
Because NASA has little understanding of the composition of the target asteroid Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium. Many details regarding the test’s outcome remain unclear, said Tom Statler, NASA’s DART program scientist.
“The issue of how prepared do we actually want to be — that’s a much broader discussion to be had across governments and the nations,” Statler said. “In addition to being able to deflect an asteroid, we still need to study the sky and look for them.”
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