Planetary defense test deflected an asteroid but unleashed a boulder swarm::A UCLA-led study of NASA’s DART mission determined that the strategy presents previously unanticipated risks.
Was no one involved alive in 1998? We had two movies about this.
Unanticipated? I’m sure I can pull out a very serious and scientific simulation that predicted this exact event from 1979. It’s called Asteroids I think.
Sounds like the gravity tug or thruster methods might end up being the better solution.
Pretty cool they were able to measure the change in velocity of an object 6 million miles away with millmeter/second resolution. Not cool that it only slowed down a few mm/second though
Actually, a few mm/sec is quite a lot. That could easily be more than enough to deflect an asteroid from hitting earth. That few mm/sec will accumulate over the time it takes the asteroid to travel six million miles.
Totally totally totally unanticipated that one. Like every discussion about asteroid defence ever anticipated exactly this kind of scenario.
