![]() But the path to a comprehensive planetary defense plan is a long and winding road, and we have just begun to walk it. The bizarre and variable geology of asteroids may serve to rebuff our deflection attempts, our network of early-warning telescopes is rife with gaping observational holes, and the politics of deciding who can try to deflect an inbound impactor are fraught with uncertainty.ĭART, no doubt, represents a major step forward. Despite resting most of our homeworld-protecting hopes on shooting at space rocks, there are no silver bullets in planetary defense. Success would not mean Earth is automatically protected from rogue asteroids. “We don’t know what’s going to happen because we’ve never tried it before,” says Michele Bannister, a planetary astronomer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Ground-based astronomers like Rivkin will watch the rendezvous unfold with bated breath, hoping to see the telltale signs of success: a dust cloud, and an asteroid dancing to humanity’s tune for the very first time. Sometime next fall, it will smash into its target at 24,000 kilometers per hour. On November 23, DART will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. This is a dry run for the real deal: one day, a technological descendant of DART could be used to deflect a planet-threatening space rock, saving millions-perhaps billions-of lives in the process. Along with hundreds of others, he is part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, an ambitious effort led by NASA and the APL to slam an uncrewed spacecraft into an asteroid to change its orbit. Rather than having to make decisions about someone’s root canal or abdominal surgery, he watched worlds flit about in the darkness.īut Rivkin, a planetary astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Baltimore, has found himself with more responsibility than he expected. “Astronomy seemed pretty safe.” And, for a while, it was. “I was like, oh man, I don’t want do anything that has too much responsibility,” he says. ![]() ET on September 26.īack when Andy Rivkin was in college, he had a few friends in medical school. ![]() Editor’s Note (9/26/22): After launching in November 2021, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is scheduled to collide with the tiny asteroid Dimorphos at 7:14 P.M. ![]()
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