NASA Launches New Mission: Crash Into Asteroid, Defend Planet Earth
The New York Times
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, launched on Wednesday, could be the first to alter an asteroid’s path, a technique that may be used to defend the planet in the future.
It was 2017, and astronomers projected an asteroid the size of a cruise ship would strike Japan sometime in the next decade.
Scientists and government officials from NASA and other space agencies, gathered at an annual planetary defense conference in Tokyo, hastily devised a plan to knock the asteroid off its path toward Earth. The island’s fate relied on a fleet of robotic spacecraft that would launch in the next few years.
In 2020, the world’s space agencies banded together, launching four ships toward the menacing space rock. The ships, known as kinetic impactors, struck their targets head-on. Japan was spared a herculean evacuation effort, its cities and neighborhoods saved from annihilation.
