NASA's Dart Mission Changed Orbit of Asteroid Didymos Around Sun

11 pointsposted 6 hours ago
by mpweiher

8 Comments

jjk166

5 hours ago

For reference, if Didymos were on a collision course with earth, we'd need to our interceptor to hit it about 16,000 years prior to impact to get it to miss Earth, or more realistically a substantially larger kinetic impactor/ swarm of impactors.

UltraSane

2 hours ago

What about a nuclear bomb?

jjk166

2 hours ago

Dart's results can't be directly translated for nuclear weapons

estimator7292

2 hours ago

Explosions don't work that way in space. Very little energy goes into moving the object. Almost all of it either dissipates into space or is spent breaking a large rock into many small rocks that still hit your planet.

You need to impart kinetic energy and quite literally push the rock away. The only reasonable way to do that is throwing inert kinetic projectiles.

Think about starting a Newton's Cradle by lighting a firecracker under it instead of dropping one of the balls. Technically the firecracker has an order of magnitude more energy, but basically none of it is translated into 'useful' kinetic motion.

bdbdbdb

5 hours ago

What about a solar sail?

jjk166

2 hours ago

Dart's results can't be directly translated for solar sails

estimator7292

2 hours ago

Would take thousands of years, and only if the trajectory was favorable.