NASA Redirects an Asteroid

Unsung Science

CBS News

Society & Culture, Earth Sciences, Science

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

65 million years ago an asteroid struck the earth. In the ensuing planetary darkness, the dinosaurs went extinct. But the dinosaurs didn’t have a space program! Now we can spot incoming asteroids with steadily improving confidence. If we see one on a collision course with the Earth, we know from the movies that the solution is to nuke it...Right? Actually, NASA has a better idea. If you can just nudge an asteroid slightly off its current path, maybe 25 or 50 years before it hits us, it won’t hit the earth. It will sail harmlessly past us. In 2022, NASA put that idea to the test. It sent a tiny spacecraft 7 million miles into space, for the express purpose of crashing into a known asteroid—to see if we could bump it into a different path. We quickly found out. This is the story of the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission.

Hear from Dr. Richard Binzel, MIT professor. Dr. Elena Adams, lead engineer for NASA’s DART mission, and Dr. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What would we do if we detected a deadly asteroid on a collision course with the Earth?
0:10.4	Sorry Hollywood, the best idea would not be blowing it up with nukes.
0:15.3	If you blow up an asteroid, you create a large number of chunks, and those chunks will
0:19.6	still have the same velocity, they'll still be going in the same direction.
0:22.7	No NASA's got a better plan, and in September 2022, they tried it.
0:28.0	This will be humanity's first ever, ever attempt at trying to move another celestial body.
0:35.0	I'm David Vogue, and this is Unsung Science.
0:47.5	Hey, prime members, you can listen to Unsung Science add free on Amazon Music.
0:52.3	Download the app today.
0:54.3	Few things are more devastating than a loved one that's gone missing.
0:57.8	From Wondry, the vanished is a podcast where host Marissa Jones tells stories of missing persons that have gone overlooked.
1:05.4	Listen to the vanished podcast wherever you get your podcasts, or you can listen add free by joining Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app.
1:15.0	Season 2, episode 7. NASA redirects an asteroid.
1:20.4	It cannot think.
1:24.4	It cannot reason.
1:28.4	It cannot change its course.
1:36.0	And it's going to strike the Earth in six days.
1:43.0	There are so many movies about asteroids hitting the Earth.
1:47.8	Armageddon, deep impact, don't look up.
1:51.0	When worlds collide, ice age collision course.
1:54.0	I mean, you can forgive Hollywood screenwriters, right?
1:57.0	An asteroid plot supplies instant drama and high stakes for the characters.
	...

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