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“We don’t want to be in a situation where an asteroid is headed toward Earth and then have to be testing this kind of capability,” he said. The key to avoiding a killer asteroid is to detect it well in advance and be ready with the means of changing its course, Nasa planetary defence officer Lindley Johnson told a media briefing this month. If an asteroid were to actually threaten Earth, it would be a good idea to identify it early on and knock it off course, because the earlier that alteration to its trajectory can be made, the further away from Earth it will hopefully end up. Why can’t they just blow it up?ĭisappointingly – or perhaps reassuringly – Nasa will not anytime soon be lowering Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to the surface of asteroid to (spoilers ahead if you’re joining us from 1997) drill a hole, drop in a nuclear bomb and then try to get away quick enough. Observations from ground-based telescopes and radar will then measure how much the moonlet’s orbit around Didymos changes. The goal is only to move it a fraction of a percentage point.

LICIACube’s pictures and telescope observations from Earth should give some indication of whether Dimorphos’s orbit has been altered. Nasa is simply undertaking some target practice with the Didymos system because its relative proximity to Earth makes it ideal to observe the results of the impact.īefore the crash, an Italian-made satellite called LICIACube will sensibly bail out from Dart and position itself nearby to send pictures and data back to Earth. Dimorphos is a football-field-sized asteroid that closely orbits a bigger asteroid, called Didymos.