{"id":159647,"date":"2023-03-06T03:22:24","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T09:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/new-results-from-nasas-dart-planetary-defense-mission-confirm-we-could-deflect-deadly-asteroids"},"modified":"2023-03-06T03:22:24","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T09:22:24","slug":"new-results-from-nasas-dart-planetary-defense-mission-confirm-we-could-deflect-deadly-asteroids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/new-results-from-nasas-dart-planetary-defense-mission-confirm-we-could-deflect-deadly-asteroids","title":{"rendered":"New results from NASA\u2019s DART planetary defense mission confirm we could deflect deadly asteroids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-results-from-nasas-dart-planetary-defense-mission-confirm-we-could-deflect-deadly-asteroids3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What would we do if we spotted a hazardous asteroid on a collision course with Earth? Could we deflect it safely to prevent the impact?<\/p>\n<p>Last year, <a href=\"https:\/\/dart.jhuapl.edu\/Mission\/\">NASA\u2019s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission<\/a> tried to find out whether a \u201ckinetic impactor\u201d could do the job: smashing a 600kg spacecraft the size of a fridge into an asteroid the size of an Aussie Rules football field.<\/p>\n<p>Early results from this first real-world test of our potential planetary defense systems looked promising. However, it\u2019s only now that the first scientific results are being published: five papers in <i>Nature<\/i> have <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-023-05810-5\">recreated the impact<\/a>, and analyzed how it changed the asteroid\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-023-05878-z\">momentum<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-023-05805-2\">orbit<\/a>, while <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-023-05811-4\">two<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-023-05852-9\">studies<\/a> investigate the debris knocked off by the impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What would we do if we spotted a hazardous asteroid on a collision course with Earth? Could we deflect it safely to prevent the impact? Last year, NASA\u2019s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission tried to find out whether a \u201ckinetic impactor\u201d could do the job: smashing a 600kg spacecraft the size of a fridge [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroid-comet-impacts","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}