Deflecting an asteroid like Bennu, which has a small probability of hitting Earth in about a century and a half, could require several small impacts from some kind of man-made massive deflection device, according to experts.
California scientists have been firing projectiles at meteorites to simulate the best methods for altering the course of an asteroid so that it would not reach Earth.
According to the results obtained so far, an asteroid like Bennu carbon-rich could need several small bumps to charge its course.
Bennu, which is about a third of a mile wide, has a slightly higher probability of hitting Earth than previously thought, NASA revealed earlier this month.
The space agency increased the risk that Bennu would impact Earth at some point in the next 300 years to one of 1,750.
Bennu also has one in 2,700 chances of hitting Earth on the afternoon of September 24, 2182, according to a NASA study.
This Bennu mosaic was created from multiple images using observations from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. While there is a small chance that Bennu will explode against Earth over the next three centuries, NASA notes that there is more than a 99.9% chance that it will not.
Scientists were seriously considering how to prevent an asteroid from colliding with Earth since the 1960s, but previous approaches have generally involved theories about how to blow up the cosmic object into thousands of pieces.
The problem with this is that these pieces could approach Earth and present a problem almost as dangerous and dangerous to humanity as the original asteroid.
A more recent approach, called kinetic impact deflection (KID), is to shoot something in space that collides more gently with the asteroid, far from Earth, while keeping it intact.
KID’s recent efforts were outlined at the 84th annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society held in Chicago this month and chaired by Dr. George Flynn, a physicist at New York State University, Plattsburgh.
“You may have to use multiple impacts,” Dr. Flynn said in a conversation with The New York Times. “Is it like that [Bennu] it may barely be missing, but barely missing.
Researchers have been working on NASA’s Ames vertical pistol range, built in the 1960s during the Apollo era and based at Moffett Federal Airfield in Silicon Valley, California, for recent KID experiments.
They fired small spherical aluminum projectiles at meteorites suspended by pieces of nylon rope.
NASA’s Ames Vertical Gun Range (AVGR, pictured) is a facility that allows experts to investigate possible impacts of meteorites or asteroids on a planet or lunar surface, as well as other areas of research.
AVGR, pictured, was designed to conduct scientific studies of lunar impact processes in support of Apollo missions.
The team used 32 meteorites, which are fragments of asteroids that have fallen to Earth from space, which were mostly bought from private dealers.
The tests have allowed them to find out at what point the momentum of a human-made object fired at an asteroid turns it into thousands of fragments, rather than leaving it out of direction as desired.
“If you break it to pieces, it’s possible that some of these pieces are still on a collision path with Earth,” Dr. Flynn said.
Carbonaceous chondrite (type C) asteroids, such as Bennu, are the most common in the solar system.
They are darker than other asteroids due to the presence of carbon and are some of the oldest objects in the solar system, dating back to their birth.
According to the conclusions of the experiments performed at AVGR, the type of target asteroid (and the amount of carbon it contains) can dictate the amount of momentum that would be directed at it from any human-made KID device.
From the experiments, the researchers found that type C meteorites could only withstand about one-sixth of the momentum that other chondrites could withstand before they broke.
‘[C-type] asteroids are much harder to deflect without interruption than normal chondrite asteroids, ”the experts concluded.
“These results indicate that multiple successive impacts may be required to deflect asteroids rather than disrupt them, especially carbonate asteroids.”
Therefore, about 160 years into the future (when Bennu is most likely to collide with Earth, according to NASA), a KID device should give it a series of soft grips to prevent it from breaking and sending dangerous fragments. of splinters flying towards the Earth.
A recent NASA study of Bennu, published in the journal Icarus earlier this month, noted that there is a more than 99.9% chance that Bennu will not fall to Earth over the next three centuries.
“While the chances of it touching Earth are very low, Bennu remains one of the two most dangerous asteroids known in our solar system, along with another asteroid called the 1950 DA,” NASA said in a statement.
The asteroid Bennu, which is about a third of a mile wide, has a probability of colliding with Earth on the afternoon of September 24, 2182 (pictured). The statement was shared by NASA on Wednesday and comes from data collected by the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft that jumps samples of the asteroid into Earth
Next year, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will test KID technologies on a real asteroid in the solar system, called Didymoon.
DART, a space probe, will hit Didymoon, orbiting a larger asteroid called Didymos, at 13,500 miles per hour (21,700 km per hour) in October 2022. The mission is expected to launch this November. .
DART will track and analyze the data of Didymos and the small asteroid Didymoon, before sketching it while it is far enough away from Earth.
A NASA mission to be launched in November 2021 will experiment with our planetary defense system to protect Earth from the threat of an asteroid collision. Pictured is the depiction of an artist from NASA’s DART mission to propel an asteroid off course
The mission is called a double asteroid or DART redirection test. NASA chart shows how the Double Asteroid Rendezvous Test (DART) will crash against a moon of the asteroid Didymos in 2022