NASA's DART mission first step to prevent Armageddon, say Indian scientists
NASA's DART mission is a step towards preparing the world for a potential future asteroid strike like the one which killed dinosaurs some 66 million years ago, the chances of which are very slim in our lifetime, Indian scientists said.
In a first-of-its-kind mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully crashed into an asteroid on Tuesday to test whether space rocks that might threaten Earth in the future could be nudged safely out of the way.
DART – the world's first planetary defence technology demonstration -- targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 160 metres in diameter.
"We are surrounded by several asteroids and comets that orbit our Sun. Very few of them are potentially hazardous to Earth. Hence, It is better to prepare our defenses to avoid such asteroids on a collision course with Earth in the future," said Chrisphin Karthick, a scientist at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru.
Karthick, who is involved in the DART project, noted that the mission "certainly is a step towards" preparing the world for a potential future event like the one which is believed to have led to the extinction of dinosaurs some 66 million years ago.
"This successful DART mission is an example of that. We now know to precisely aim the spacecraft for such a small body. We can also prepare ourselves for the larger body from the post-impact observations of this DART mission," Karthick told PTI.
Dimorphos orbits a larger 780-metre asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth. By comparison, the dinosaur-killing asteroid that hit Earth was about 10 kilometers in diameter.
The DART mission's one-way trip, confirmed NASA, can successfully navigate a
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