Fearing that an asteroid could crash into the earth in the foreseeable future, researchers now want to take precautions.
A NASA probe is said to crash into an asteroid on purpose.
Washington - It sounds like a scene from a Hollywood film that researchers are currently planning in space.
On Wednesday, November 24, 2021, the US space agency NASA launched a probe for the first time that is intended to crash into an asteroid.
The researchers' plan: the asteroid's trajectory should change.
Researchers are currently not aware of any asteroid that is hurtling straight to Earth.
But should this ever be the case, researchers want to be prepared.
Space mission started: NASA probe intended to crash into asteroids - "We'll get you"
The aircraft took off on Wednesday morning German time using a "Falcon 9" rocket from the US state of California. "Asteroid Dimorphos: We'll get you," tweeted NASA shortly after the start. The clash should then take place next October. Nasa hopes that the "Dart" (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which costs around $ 330 million (around EUR 290 million), will provide information on how the earth could be protected from approaching asteroids.
According to NASA calculations, Dimorphos, a kind of moon of the asteroid Didymos with a diameter of around 160 meters, does not pose a threat to Earth at the moment - and the mission is designed so that the asteroid only uses a camera even after the probe hits on board should not pose any danger.
After the impact, the approximately twelve-hour orbit of Dimorphos is said to be at least 73 seconds and possibly up to ten minutes shorter.
The Esa “Hera” mission is scheduled to start in 2024 to investigate the effects of the impact more closely.
At the moment, researchers do not know of any asteroid that could speed directly towards Earth in the foreseeable future.
But scientists are said to have identified around 27,000 asteroids in the vicinity of our planet.
Around 10,000 of them would have a diameter of more than 140 meters.
