Australia will be in charge of the last moments of NASA’s daring mission to smash into an asteroid.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, known as DART, is due to deliberately collide with the asteroid Dimorphos – which is about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza – at 9.15am Australian time on Tuesday.
An illustration of NASA’s DART probe (upper right), which is on course to collide with the asteroid, Dimorphos (left). Credit:AP
DART is a test of NASA’s planetary defence plans. The hope is that an asteroid at risk of striking the Earth could be diverted by hitting it with a spacecraft.
“This is an Armageddon, Deep Impact and Don’t Look Up all rolled into one,” said Glen Nagle, spokesman for the CSIRO-managed Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.
“We do want to have a better chance than the dinosaurs had 65 million years ago.”
CSIRO engineers will also use the 35-metre antenna at New Norcia in Western Australia to monitor DART’s last moments.
They will be responsible for sending any final commands from NASA, but as the craft approaches the asteroid, it will switch over to internal guidance.
There will be little for those in the control room in Canberra to do other than watch the video feed.
“It’s pretty much on its own,” Nagle said. “It needs to make its own targeting decisions to make that collision about 6.3 kilometres per second.”
NASA’s online broadcast will start at 8am Australian time on Tuesday. You can watch it on NASA’s website.
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