Tag: asteroid

What will be visible when NASA’s DART spacecraft crashes into an asteroid!

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Cape Canaveral, Florida – NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test aims to make history Monday at 7:14 p.m. ET when it smashes into Dimorphos, a small asteroid orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. If the impact is successful, it will slightly alter the motion of the asteroid. It’s a test of deflection technology that could one day be used to protect Earth if a space rock is identified on an impact path with our planet. Currently, there are no asteroids (including Didymus and Demorphos) that are expected to hit our world. Here’s…

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How a small asteroid strike can save Earthlings from the city-killing space rocks

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Movies that imagine an asteroid or comet catastrophically colliding with Earth always feature a main scene: a lone astronomer discovers a stray piece of space heading toward us, sparking panic and a heightened sense of existential dread as the researcher tells the wider world. On March 11, life began imitating art. That evening, at the Piszkéstető mountain station at the Konkoli Observatory near Budapest, Krisztián Sárneczky was looking up at the stars. Unhappy with the discovery of 63 near-Earth asteroids throughout his career, he’s been striving to find the 64…

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