Spacecraft-asteroid collision data show this technique could protect Earth, NASA says.

Months after NASA demonstrated it has the technology to control a spacecraft traveling at over 14,000 miles per hour to hit an asteroid, a new study suggests similar techniques could be used to protect Earth.

In late September, NASA conducted the Double Asteroid Redirect test, a mission in which a spacecraft crashed into Dimorphos, a small asteroid that poses no threat to Earth, to test the “asteroid deflection method.”

Taking data from the successful test, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland published several scientific papers supporting the method as a potential defense against asteroid impacts, NASA said in a press release earlier this month. .

The findings showed NASA’s ability to “intercept an asteroid” similar in size to Dimorphos and “encourage humanity’s ability to protect the Earth from an asteroid threat,” the press release said.

Nicola Fox, assistant administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said the September test was “just the beginning” of the group’s mission.

“These results add to our fundamental understanding of asteroids and lay the foundation for how humanity can protect the Earth from a potentially dangerous asteroid by changing its course,” Fox said in a written statement.

The papers documented numerous results from the first test, including those related to the autonomous guidance systems used to navigate the spacecraft and how that method affected the target asteroid’s trajectory.

According to the agency’s website, the DART team is part of NASA’s planetary defense efforts and its near-Earth object observation program.

Program researchers aim to identify, track and document at least 90 percent of space objects that are at least 140 meters in size.

“Objects of this size and larger pose a hazard to the Earth of great concern due to the level of destruction that a collision could cause and should remain the focus of global research efforts,” the website says.

No asteroid crossing that 140-meter threshold is estimated to have a “significant chance” of colliding with our planet in the next century, but according to NASA, there are plenty of near-Earth objects that have yet to be documented.

About 1,000 people were injured, mostly from glass fragments, in 2013 when a meteorite exploded in the skies over Russia.

Jason Kalirai, civil space mission regional manager for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said the results presented in the recently published papers will help the world understand how to protect itself from potential damage and impacts from extraterrestrial objects.

“Following the encounter with Dimorphos, a baseline analysis was initiated and the results demonstrate how effective the kinetic strike technique can be, paving the way for a bright future of planetary defense,” Kalirai said.

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The post Spacecraft-asteroid collision data show this technique could protect Earth, NASA says.

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