NASA will carry out between September 26 and October 1 an experiment in which a spacecraft will collide with an asteroid to try to slightly change its trajectory and thus test whether the method would serve to avoid a hypothetical collision of such a celestial body with the Earth.
Specifically, the DART spacecraft will collide with the asteroid Dimorphosa one speed of 6.5 kilometers per secondand it is estimated that the impact energy will be comparable to the explosion of three tons of trinitrotoliene (TNT).
It is the first large-scale mission in history that will test Earth’s defense technology against potential asteroid or comet impacts. The spacecraft built for the mission launched toward Dimorphosa on November 24.
Another attractive mission that NASA has planned imminently is the launch of the Artemis lunar exploration system on the 29th of this month, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
It is a uncrewed flight test which will provide a base for space exploration, and the first step in establishing a lunar base. During this flight, the spacecraft will travel about 450,600 kilometers from Earth in a journey of about three weeks.
Also, Crew-5, a joint mission between NASA and SpaceX, will take off from the Kennedy Space Center on September 29 with a Russian astronaut, Anna Kikina, along with NASA’s Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada and Japanese Koichi Wakata. They will travel to the International Space Station for a six-month scientific mission in its microgravity laboratory.
Finally, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will launch the JPSS-2 weather and climate satellite mission on November 1, which will circle the Earth from pole to pole and cross the equator about 14 times a day, providing global coverage Complete twice a day. From 824 kilometers high, it will collect data that will inform weather forecasts, extreme weather events and global warming.
.
