NASA Will Build Its First Planetary Defense Spacecraft

Just like a scene from the movie Men in Black or Armageddon, NASA short for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has made an announcement on its plans to test its planetary defense system in real life in the next few years. This is going to be a significant milestone for the Planetary Defense Coordination Office of NASA as well as planet Earth.

Most space enthusiasts and researchers would have the same opinion that the cause of dinosaurs’ extinction was an asteroid. These asteroids are still a serious threat to life on Earth. Even an asteroid with moderate size could cause apocalyptic like events which may lead to humans fighting for resources.

Although the modern civilization is extremely good at Near Earth Objects identification, science is still lacking necessary tools to properly handle any potential threats that may be coming towards the planet. But don’t you worry as NASA is here to save the Earth.

Known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), NASA plans to create a collision between the DART spacecraft and Didymos, a non-threatening asteroid. With this, NASA can test the capability of redirecting celestial object’s direction of the shuttle.

The Didymos has a size of 300 meters while its moonlet or secondary body is 150 meters in size. Didymos is the perfect experimental subject as it is the standard size of asteroids that are a common threat to planet Earth.

DART will be a representative case of using the kinetic impact technique in changing an asteroid’s motion in space.

After being 11 million kilometers away from Earth, the spacecraft will make a deliberate collision with the moonlet of Didymos. The speed of the crashing will be about 6 km per second. The DART spacecraft will be equipped with a sophisticated navigation software to maintain precision.

The spacecraft from NASA will use the NEXT-C (NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster-Commercial) on its journey towards the target Didymos. The DART spacecraft is expected to be launched in late Dec 2020 and to May 2021.

It will be quite interesting to see how this mission will be carried out to help NASA create more advanced technology for planet Earth’s protection.