Some will object to tampering with the movement of celestial bodies. That’s especially likely if it turns out there are unanticipated consequences to knocking asteroids off course.ĭon’t be surprised if the project has its detractors. If the goal of this device is to protect the planet, the rest of the planet will likely want to have a say in its use. It will provide far more information about earth-threatening asteroids and allow far more time to work on missions to combat them.Īnd then there’s the inevitable international dialogue. Perhaps the most important to-do is the hoped-for 2028 launch into space of a special telescope. Scientists will also look at whether there’s a more effective way of targeting asteroids than crashing a spacecraft into them. There’s a lot to be learned yet about the effects of this crash. Years of observation of Dimorphos lie ahead. That looks like enough to have prevented a strike had Dimorphos been headed our way. The spacecraft that hit Dimorphos, which was going 14,000 miles per hour, shortened the asteroid’s orbit time around another asteroid, Didymos, by 32 minutes or about 4%. Still, it was big enough to cause billions in damage and take countless lives had it somehow struck the earth. The asteroid Dimorphos, as seen from the spacecraft that crashed into it 11 seconds later in NASA’s trial run to save the earth from asteroids. It was only 525 feet in diameter, less than 2% the width of the asteroid that did in the dinosaurs. Dimorphos, the asteroid DART knocked off course, wasn’t headed for earth. For the planet to be truly safe from asteroid strikes, much still needs to be done.Īfter all, this was just a test. What NASA achieved with DART is just the start of something. What NASA achieved in 1969 was the fulfillment of a promise, President John F Kennedy’s 1962 vow to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. It’s also true that the end of a story is more satisfying than the beginning. We naturally find what a man does in space more gripping than what a machine does. Speciesism –our human tendency to be especially interested in what others of our human species do – is part of it. There are, to be sure, reasons why DART has been underappreciated. As balance to my recent column that called solving climate change “the techno-optimist’s dilemma,” I’m willing to concede that DART looks like a techno-optimist’s triumph. The success of this audacious and in some ways outlandish mission also reminds us not to give up on bold new technological solutions to big problems. The ability to ward off an asteroid strike is potentially life-changing for earth and its inhabitants. The same can’t be said, alas, for NASA administrator Bill Nelson’s October 11 declaration that knocking the asteroid off course was “a watershed moment for planetary defense and a watershed moment for humanity.” What astronaut Neil Armstrong said when he touched down on the moon – “That was one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” – captured people’s imaginations. Where are the philosophers holding forth about DART? As the greenest of greenhorn reporters at the Wall Street Journal, just two months out of college, I was assigned to make phone calls to philosophers around the world, asking them to hold forth on the event’s meaning. The moon landing prompted some major philosophizing in the media. In 2013, an asteroid exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, creating a shockwave that injured 1,500 people and destroyed 7,200 buildings across six cities.īeing able to stop one of these babies from reaching earth is huge. The six-mile-wide Chicxulub Asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago wiped out 70% of all species on earth, including the dinosaurs. Not to take away anything from that historic NASA achievement, but the moon poses no threat to anyone on earth, save for the occasional rip tide. That seems strange because this feat is arguably as important as the 1969 landing of a man on the moon. Pundits haven’t been opining about its meaning. It hasn’t been treated as an event whose implications deserve further exploration. So far, this story has been a two-day wonder. News organizations also covered NASA’s October 11 announcement that the crash had achieved its goal of knocking the asteroid off course.īut that’s it. On September 26 the media weighed in on NASA’s successful crashing of a golf-cart-sized spacecraft into an asteroid. NASA’s DART-game victory hasn’t gotten the attention or respect it deserves.Įven the news media reports on the agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test have been fragmentary.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |