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NASA's DART mission will move an asteroid and change our relationship with the solar system - Space.com

NASA's DART mission will move an asteroid and change our relationship with the solar system - Space.com

NASA's DART mission will move an asteroid and change our relationship with the solar system - Space.com
Nov 21, 2021 2 mins, 38 secs

So next year, planetary defense will take a big step, conducting its first experiment to determine how such a deflection might play out in reality thanks to NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, which launches later this month.

Related: If an asteroid really threatened the Earth, what would a planetary defense mission look like.

"Intervening in small-body dynamics is just a huge deal," Valerie Olson, an anthropologist at the University of California Irvine who has studied the planetary defense community, told Space.com, Early advocates of planetary defense recognized that such a mission would at its core re-engineer the solar system, she noted?

To be clear, the experts who suggest looking at the bigger picture of the DART mission aren't necessarily saying that planetary defense should be abandoned — just that it's an endeavor worth thinking about from multiple perspectives and in multiple contexts, rather than letting one narrative of what it means to save the planet dominate the conversation.

Treviño compared asteroid deflection to damming a river on Earth as an action that might benefit humans but that has broader consequences across the environment.

"What is our responsibility to our solar system?" Treviño said.

That line may depend on not just the scale of effect on orbital dynamics, but also on who is making the decisions about a planetary defense project.

All three experts noted that, although the worst-case impact scenario could destroy on a regional scale and have global consequences, only a handful of nations have the spacefaring capability to contemplate embarking on a planetary defense mission.

A challenge the planetary defense community often considers is how to ensure that non-spacefaring nations have a say in how Earth responds to an asteroid threat.

"It's very particular people in particular agencies making decisions about how to intervene in the most natural and least social of spaces, which is outer space." Olson said.

"The majority of the public, whether that's an American public or the world in general, aren't particularly aware of this mission," Treviño said.

And of course, planetary defense technology — like all other technologies ever developed — could be abused.

"I hate to be the naysayer, the killjoy, but to say, 'OK, we can just move something in the solar system just to see if we can do it' — where does that end up going, and what are the ramifications?" Treviño said?

But for a real planetary defense mission, if something does go wrong, the results may be very grim indeed, turning a natural disaster into a social one instead of preventing anything, Olson said.

"A lot of the rhetoric around this project is about how this is one of the biggest problems that might face Earth," Armstrong said, contrasting the decisiveness of a planetary defense strategy with floundering attempts in the United States and abroad to address, say, the climate crisis.

— Defending Earth against dangerous asteroids: Q&A with NASA's Lindley Johnson.

— What would happen if an asteroid were going to hit Earth.

And climate upheaval can happen with no asteroid in the picture — as we, of all beings, know firsthand.

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