WEBVTT - How Could NASA's DART Mission Change the Cosmos? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.000 Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:12.240 Stuff learned Volga bam here. In November one, NASA's double 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:17.840 Asteroid Redirection test robotic spacecraft, called DART for short, took 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:21.000 off into space on a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket on 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:24.440 a mission to intercept and change the orbit of an asteroid. 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:30.440 Sometime in September or October, when DART is about seven 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:34.720 million miles or eleven million kilometers from our planet, this spacecraft, 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.680 weighing twelve thousand pounds or five fifty kilos and costing 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:43.600 three five million dollars, will reach its target, Dimorphous, a 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:47.720 small asteroid that orbits a second larger piece of space rock, Didimus, 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:51.200 as the pair travels in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.600 While Dimorphous is not on course to hit the Earth, 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:58.360 it does provide a nice safe target for testing technology 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:00.840 that might someday helped he to the Earth from a 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:04.240 catastrophic collision with a killer asteroid, as such as the 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:07.600 one that wiped out the dinosaurs and plant and animal 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:12.200 life some sixty six million years ago. When it reaches 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:15.240 dim Morphous, DART will slam into the space rock at 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:17.920 a speed of about six point six kilometers or four 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:21.640 point one miles per second, hopefully giving the asteroid enough 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:24.240 of a jolt to alter its orbit around its partner 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:28.320 just slightly, but enough that the alteration might be observed 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:33.280 by telescopes on Earth. For the article of this episode 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:35.720 is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke by email with 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:40.720 Linley Johnson, NASA's first ever planetary Defense officer, he said 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:43.840 DART is a test of the effectiveness of the kinetic 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:47.880 impact or technique for altering an asteroid's orbital path, and 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.360 of the spacecraft technology used to deliver a kinetic impact 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:55.440 or to the target asteroid. Crashing a spacecraft into an 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:59.480 asteroid might sound easy, but it's not how stuff works. 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:03.440 Also with Andy Rivkin, the DART investigation co lead from 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:06.800 the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which is leading the 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:11.240 project for NASA, he said, Dimorphus is the smallest object 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:13.919 that has ever been a mission target, and we're coming 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:16.440 in very fast with a need to impact on the 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:20.600 first try, without knowing fundamental things like dimorphous is shape 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:24.760 or exact size. It's about three thousand, six hundred feet 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:28.120 that's one thous from the center of Dinomus to the 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:32.120 center of dimorphous and it's probably less than two thousand 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:34.840 feet or six hundred meters from the surface of one 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:37.600 to the surface of the other. We don't want to 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:42.400 miss and we don't want to hit Didymus. Furthermore, the 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.600 spacecraft has to overtake that target at such a high 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:49.480 speed that there's very little margin for error the blink 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:52.560 of an eye, according to the DART team. To achieve 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.880 the necessary precision, the spacecraft will be guided by smart nav, 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:01.200 a totally automated navigation system that require there's no human input. 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:05.280 The spacecraft will also utilize an imaging instrument called the 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:09.240 Denimus Reconnaissance and Asteroid camera for op NAV a k A. 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.800 Draco to see where it's going, but it'll only be 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:15.959 able to see its target in the last hour before impact. 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.480 How Stuff works also spoke by email with Dark program 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:24.440 scientist Tom Statler. He said, if we ever need to 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.720 carry out a kinetic impact to prevent a natural disaster, 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:30.680 we might need to do so quite far from Earth, 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.880 which would make autonomous control by the spacecraft absolutely essential. 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:38.400 That's why we want to demonstrate and validate this technology 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:42.200 with DART. The scientists don't really know what will happen 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:45.480 when Dart hits the asteroid. Though. The thing is is 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:47.560 that although they have a pretty good idea of what 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:50.920 dimorphous is made up of, they're not sure how solidly 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:54.480 that material is sewn together. If it's just a loose 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:58.240 collection of rebel held together by gravity, that will impact 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:01.680 the impact of how much material is broken off into 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:06.240 space and how much Dimorphous budgets in its orbit. A 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:09.320 dart is an early step in protecting human life from 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:12.120 being wiped out by a space rock, but it also 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:16.320 changes humanity's relationship to the cosmos. Up to this point, 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:19.520 space has been something that we watch from afar and 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.560 occasionally send brave souls to visit for brief periods. But 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:27.000 now it's going to become something that humans can tinker with, 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.720 just as we've altered our own planet. Has stuff works 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.720 also spoke by an email with Martin Elvis, an astrophysicist 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:37.080 at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian and author 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:41.920 of the book Asteroids, How Love, fear Ingreed will determine 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:46.279 our future in space. He said, perhaps the biggest point 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:49.880 is that Dart will be humanity's first attempt to deliberately 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.279 change the orbit of a solar system body. The amount 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:56.560 we will change the orbital speed of dimorphous will only 0:04:56.640 --> 0:05:00.640 be by blessed than a snail's pace, literally four point 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.320 six feet or one point four meters per hour. Yet 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.839 it is not zero. The architecture of the solar system 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:12.440 will be subtly altered. He says that while this doesn't 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:16.840 have any immediate importance, it is symbolic. Quote. There are 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:20.039 those who will thrill to this stepping out of humanity. 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.240 There are others who will say, not again, must we 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:27.120 repeat our environmental mistakes, only now on a far larger scale. 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.040 Note that even an asteroid as small as di Morphus 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.400 could do a lot of damage if it struck Earth. 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:36.800 It's punique compared to the massive asteroid that wiped out 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:39.880 the dinosaurs, whose size has been estimated at about six 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:44.440 miles or ten kilometers across. But Johnson notes that di 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:48.240 Morphus is three times the size and possibly five times 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:51.279 the mass of the asteroid that created the Baringer Crater 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:55.800 in eastern Arizona some fifty thou years ago. Johnson said 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:59.000 it would impact with an estimated energy of roughly ten 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:02.560 mega tons of t NT, larger than any nuclear bomb 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:05.600 and create a crater of a few miles in diameter 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:09.040 and a quarter mile in depth. Blast effects might extend 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:11.640 for a hundred and fifty miles in all directions from 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:15.279 the impact site, and the prospect of such disaster makes 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:19.159 it conceivable that some future asteroid defense mission might need 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:23.880 to target an object of dimorphous size. If dart Works 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.120 is planned, Johnson said it will validate both the kinetic 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:30.960 impact or technique for planetary defense purposes and that current 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:35.760 technology enables our ability to perform the deflection, but that 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.160 doesn't mean that NASA will rush to build more spacecraft 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:43.520 that can perform the same feat Johnson explained a significant 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.560 asteroid impact is an extremely rare natural disaster, and what 0:06:47.760 --> 0:06:50.760 techniques might be used to deflect one detected in advance 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.880 would be very scenario dependent, especially on how many years 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.120 in advance it was discovered. The decades may pass before 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:01.000 the next major impact or is discovered, and the planetary 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:03.960 defense program of that time in the future may want 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:06.800 to use the more advanced technology that will likely be 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:12.880 available by then. Today's episode is based on the article 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.200 NASA's Dark Mission is humans first attempt to adjust the 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:19.400 cosmos on how stuff works? Dot com written by Patrick J. Keiger. 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:22.240 Brainstuff is production of I heart Radio in partnership with 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:24.640 houstff Works dot com and is produced by Tyler Klang 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:27.760 with assistance by Ramsey Young. Four more podcasts from my 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:30.840 heart Radio. Visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:32.680 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.