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NASA plans to hit an asteroid1 with a spacecraft to change its course
NASA is getting ready to give an asteroid a little push, in a test intended to ready Earth's defenses against a potential asteroid approach.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
When a space rock threatens Earth in movies like "Armageddon," the answer is almost always, blow it up with nukes.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARMAGEDDON")
STANLEY ANDERSON: (As President) This new one you're tracking - how big?
BILLY BOB THORNTON: (As Dan Truman) It's what we call a global killer4. Nothing would survive, not even bacteria.
FADEL: Science fiction, obviously - but a more realistic strategy for planetary defense3 is being tested for the first time in history today by NASA. The agency will try to push an asteroid off course by ramming5 it with a spacecraft. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce tells us what to expect.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE6: Have no fear. The asteroid that NASA is targeting is not on a collision course with Earth. It's about 7 million miles away. And officials stress that there's no way their test could send it careening towards us.
TOM STATLER: We're doing this test when we don't need to on an asteroid that isn't a danger just in case we ever do need to and we discover an asteroid that is a danger.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's Tom Statler, a NASA program scientist for the DART7 mission. That stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test.
STATLER: We are moving an asteroid. We are changing the motion of a natural celestial8 body in space. Humanity has never done that before. And this is stuff of science fiction books and really corny episodes of "Star Trek9" from when I was a kid. And now it's real.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: At 7:14 p.m. Eastern Time, a spacecraft that launched last year will slam into the asteroid, which is called Dimorphos. In terms of size and scale, the scientists say this will be like a golf cart ramming the Great Pyramid in Egypt at 14,000 miles per hour.
Elena Adams is a mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied10 Physics Laboratory.
ELENA ADAMS: This mission has two parts. The first part is hitting the asteroid. The next part is actually measuring what happens afterwards.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Everyone can watch. NASA will broadcast images from the DART spacecraft on its website. In the last hour, the asteroid will loom11 bigger and bigger as the spacecraft gets closer.
ADAMS: Our last image is probably going to be from about 2 1/2 seconds prior to impact.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: And then, crash. Another little spacecraft nearby will take pictures and send them back to Earth in the coming days. Plus, telescopes on seven continents as well as in space will watch the smash-up and its aftermath. This asteroid is actually orbiting another bigger asteroid. The collision should drive it closer to its big buddy12 and slightly shorten the time it takes to go around. Asteroid experts have long called for a test like this.
Former astronaut Ed Lu is executive director of the Asteroid Institute, a program run by a nonprofit dedicated13 to planetary defense.
ED LU: Someday, we are going to find an asteroid which has a high probability of hitting the Earth, and we are going to want to deflect14 it.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says he's 100% certain of that because asteroids15 have been hitting Earth for its entire history. Astronomers16 who search for space rocks have found most of the really big ones. None threaten Earth. But smaller ones that could take out a city - a lot of those just haven't been seen.
Lindley Johnson is NASA's planetary protection officer. He says more asteroids need to be found and tracked so there's plenty of time to devise a plan - years, decades, even centuries - which is a far cry from the usual Hollywood scenario17.
LINDLEY JOHNSON: So you have to make it exciting, and, you know, we find the asteroid only 18 days before it's going to impact, and everybody runs around with their hair on fire. That's not the way to do planetary defense.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says, with enough warning, you could just give an asteroid a little nudge, like in today's test.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
1 asteroid | |
n.小行星;海盘车(动物) | |
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2 transcript | |
n.抄本,誊本,副本,肄业证书 | |
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3 defense | |
n.防御,保卫;[pl.]防务工事;辩护,答辩 | |
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4 killer | |
n.杀人者,杀人犯,杀手,屠杀者 | |
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5 ramming | |
n.打结炉底v.夯实(土等)( ram的现在分词 );猛撞;猛压;反复灌输 | |
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6 byline | |
n.署名;v.署名 | |
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7 dart | |
v.猛冲,投掷;n.飞镖,猛冲 | |
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8 celestial | |
adj.天体的;天上的 | |
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9 trek | |
vi.作长途艰辛的旅行;n.长途艰苦的旅行 | |
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10 applied | |
adj.应用的;v.应用,适用 | |
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11 loom | |
n.织布机,织机;v.隐现,(危险、忧虑等)迫近 | |
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12 buddy | |
n.(美口)密友,伙伴 | |
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13 dedicated | |
adj.一心一意的;献身的;热诚的 | |
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14 deflect | |
v.(使)偏斜,(使)偏离,(使)转向 | |
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15 asteroids | |
n.小行星( asteroid的名词复数 );海盘车,海星 | |
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16 astronomers | |
n.天文学者,天文学家( astronomer的名词复数 ) | |
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17 scenario | |
n.剧本,脚本;概要 | |
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