An extraordinary test by NASA will crash a probe into an asteroid in a bid to develop techniques that defend Earth from potential hazards.
On September 26, a $330million spacecraft is set to slam headfirst into Dimorphos, a small asteroid with a diameter of 170 metres. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is the first experiment to attempt to 'bump' an object out of the way.
Scientists are aiming to change the trajectory of the asteroid. If the experiment works, the findings could then be used to defend the planet from dangerous space rocks or comets, WalesOnline reports.
"These objects are hurtling through space and have scarred the moon and, over time, also on Earth have had major impacts that have affected our history," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA.
"A series of new missions that we put in place are actually helping us understand and quantify those threats in an unprecedented fashion. DART is the first mission to try to really bump out of the way an object of threat in a direct experiment."
Dimorphos is actually a moon which orbits the near-Earth asteroid Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. The probe will carry a sophisticated guidance, navigation, and control system, called Small-body Manoeuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav), which will enable it to identify and distinguish between the two asteroids.
The DART impact should adjust the orbit of Dimorphos, cutting its circuit by perhaps 10 minutes. Scientists will be spending weeks after the impact measuring the actual change in the moonlet's orbit to compare with their predictions.
"This isn't just a one-off event," said Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
"We want to know what happened to Dimorphos, but more important, we want to understand what that means for potentially applying this technique in the future."
The mission is considered to be extremely difficult according to deputy mission system engineer Evan Smith, who revealed the spacecraft will only be able to see the asteroid itself about an hour and a half before impact.
"This is incredibly challenging," he said. "This is a par-one course, so we're going in for the hit this time."
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