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Can Earth defend itself from asteroids? Today we can say yes, Today is a historic day for information. It was the first successful orb trajectory planetary defense experiment.
NASA’s Dart probe hit Demorphosthe small asteroid with a diameter of 160 meters, to divert its courseIt is ideal for this task. As the probe approached its target, its camera captured the first images and data (like a cosmic photojournalist) of the surface of the celestial body, 13 million kilometers from Earth. I was “Amazing effect!”Simon Perrotta, ASI’s LiciaCube mission chief, who followed the mission from the Turin control center, told ANSA. “The Dart probe’s SmartNav targeting technology worked perfectly. We followed the end of the NASA mission with passion, realizing that our young reporter was documenting a historic moment: the first time humanity changed the orbital state of a celestial body.” The scientists insisted that Dart would not destroy Demorphos, but would only divert the course, this also to make the initiation possible. The beginning of a new series of operations dedicated to planetary defense. In 2024, the European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch Hera, a mission that will have to examine and measure the crater left by the Dart impact and collect data on the composition and mass of the asteroid.
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