rocketsocks t1_jajul22 wrote
Reply to comment by Starks in NASA’s DART data validates kinetic impact as planetary defense method | DART altered the orbit of the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos by 33 minutes by mepper
It scales up to some degree. There are lots of different kinds of asteroids which might be a threat to Earth. The DART data represents the first entry in a spreadsheet which might be filled out well enough to start having confidence in one way to divert rubble pile asteroids.
What that could look like eventually in a hypothetical practical application would be a medium sized asteroid that was a threat many years (hopefully decades or centuries) into the future and a series of impactor vehicles being sent to apply a sufficient set of nudges to divert it away from the impact scenario. Realistically anything like that would be part of a family of systems with different operational characteristics to handle different bodies of different scales of threat over different timelines.
Eaton_Rifles t1_jalhv6n wrote
Maybe it’s an asteroids game sort of approach, so you hit a smaller asteroid adjusting it’s orbit, bits of that then slam into the threatening asteroid with more effect than just using the original impact object...👍
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