4 years to develop an effective anti-asteroid response?
Comment on place yer bets
knightly@pawb.social 1 week agoWe’ll get a better idea of whether it’ll hit or not in 2028 the next time it passes close to earth, which will give us plenty of time to respond before it might hit in 2032.
DontRedditMyLemmy@lemmy.world 1 week ago
knightly@pawb.social 1 week ago
Well, yeah. Deflecting an impact that’s scheduled 4 years in the future wouldn’t take much force and we did it once before with the DART mission. We can just do that again in the months between when the asteroid comes back around and when it flies past us.
apprehensively_human@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Except that 2028 would also be our window to do something about it before it disappears back into space. There needs to be a plan now, even if that plan is to wait and see where it’s going to hit.
knightly@pawb.social 1 week ago
In short, we already have a plan. DART proved that we can do it, and off-the-shelf rockets like the Falcon 9 have plenty of performance. All that remains is to wait until early 2028 when we get a proper fix on the asteroid, then we’ve got 7 or 8 months to prep and launch a mission before the window of opportunity closes.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esk1hg2knno