Explainer: What is NASA's DART mission? How will it protect earth from asteroid strikes? know details

NASA DART Mission: NASA's latest mission is a quintessential example of learning from history and preparing for the future. Almost 66 million years ago, an asteroid 10 km thick in diameter hit the earth and led to extinction of all the dinosaurs on the earth.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) project is a defensive step towards safeguarding the earth from asteroid strike.

This mission is one of the world's first planetary defence technology demonstrations. The successful hit at Dimorphos, a 16 metres in diameter asteroid, poses future-ready asteroid deflection technology.

"We are surrounded by several asteroids and comets that orbit our Sun. Very few of them are potentially hazardous to Earth. Hence, It is better to prepare our defenses to avoid such asteroids on a collision course with Earth in the future," said Chrisphin Karthick, a scientist at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in conversation with PTI.

Karthick, who is involved in the DART project further added in conversation with PTI, " The successful DART mission is an example of that. We now know to precisely aim the spacecraft for such a small body. We can also prepare ourselves for the larger body from the post-impact observations of this DART mission."

How does this project defend against strikes from celestial objects?

The mission proves that it is possible to send spacecraft in space and push the asteroid, situated millions of miles away, off its trajectory through kinetic impact to prevent the rocky traveler from colliding with earth.

The DART mission is aimed at pushing the coming asteroid or celestial rock out of the way rather than blowing it up and creating multiple pieces that could rain down on Earth.

Though, only time will tell how much the deflection the nudge caused.

The space agency, NASA uses radars and lidars to spot Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) supported by ground-based telescopic surveys and existing space satellites that track down the potential threats.

However, Lidar is a way of calculating the distance between the targeted object and the surface with a laser and estimating the time.

(With PTI inputs)