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"Falcon 9" rocket at launch in California: "Asteroid Dimorphos: We'll get you"
Photo: Bill Ingalls / NASA / EPA
For the first time, the US space agency Nasa has launched a probe that is intended to deliberately crash into an asteroid and thereby change its trajectory. The aircraft took off on Wednesday morning German time with the help of a "Falcon 9" rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in the US state of California. "Asteroid Dimorphos: We'll get you," tweeted NASA shortly after the start. The US Space Agency later reported that the probe had separated from the rocket's second stage after 55 minutes. She also rolled out her solar sails and started the ten-month journey.
The probe is scheduled to hit the asteroid Dimorphos 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 satellite of the asteroid Didymos with a diameter of around 160 meters, currently poses no threat to Earth - and the mission is designed in such a way that the asteroid only turns on one camera even after the probe hits 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.
Currently, astronomers don't know of any asteroid that could speed straight to Earth in the foreseeable future - but researchers have identified around 27,000 asteroids near our planet, around 10,000 of which are more than 140 meters in diameter.
The emerging space nation China has also asked itself questions about defending against asteroids on a collision course.
One possibility would be to tackle the problem with concentrated rocket power.
To do this, China could send almost two dozen of the country's largest missiles.
At the National Space Science Center, headquartered in Beijing, researchers have shown in simulations that the impact of 23 rockets of the "Long March 5" type on an asteroid that is about 1.4 times the Earth's radius and is of a certain size, might be enough to distract it from its original path.
Researchers also repeatedly carry out simulation games for such scenarios.
Most recently, a simulation had shown that a strike with nuclear explosive devices could actually protect our planet from an asteroid impact.
joe / dpa