NASA’S “DART” MISSION, ASTEROIDS, AND KINETIC IMPACT ...
You might recall that we began this week with a blog on Monday about the Chinese plans for a lunar catapult "cargo launcher", which, as I pointed out, was really a weapons technology that can be used for other "more peaceful" purposes. The principle which I articulated in the blog is worth repeating here, because it forms the core of much of what I've written on this and similar topics: in such cases, one is not dealing with a peaceful technology which can be weaponized, but rather, with a weapon which under certain circumstances be repurposed for peaceful uses. This is important, because in my opinion this is the principle under which space will be (and probably already has been) weaponized. With that in mind, this article was shared by J.Q., and we are particularly grateful that he spotted it and took the time to share it:
NASA’s asteroid-smashing mission has permanently knocked a moon off its orbit
This is a particularly intriguing article is one ponders it from the standpoint of the above principle as an interpretative template. Consider what the article states:
Remember when NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid last year? Well, the aftermath of that cosmic collision just got a whole lot more interesting.
In a groundbreaking study published in the Planetary Science Journal, scientists have uncovered some unexpected results from NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. It turns out that when DART slammed into the asteroid moon Dimorphos in 2022, it didn’t just leave a dent – it completely reshaped the celestial body and potentially set it on a chaotic new path.
First, a quick refresher: DART was NASA’s test run for planetary defense. The idea was to see if we could change the course of an asteroid by hitting it with a spacecraft – kind of like a game of cosmic billiards. The target was Dimorphos, a small asteroid moon orbiting a larger asteroid called Didymos.
Now, here’s where things get interesting. According to Derek Richardson, a professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland and a lead researcher on the DART mission, the impact did more than just nudge Dimorphos off course. It dramatically altered its shape.
One notes that the article casts the whole NASA DART mission in the context of "planetary defense", and that means that kinetic impact itself is, primarily, a weapons technology. But what is intriguing to contemplate in this respect is that the DART mission is implying the emergence of something new: a "celestial impact mechanics" which will be based on the composition and make-up of a target object and how it responds to impacts in specific circumstances (vector of impact, velocity, shape of impacting object and so on), and how all this might influence special types of systems that are tidally locked, and so on. In short, it is no longer feasible to imagine a kinetic impact simply destroying or nudging a target "off course". One might also be able to envision such a science as being the birth of a new kind of celestial materials and systems engineering.
In a sense, all the above amounts to the beginnings, perhaps, of the "second chapter" of ballistics. Just as the nineteenth century - with the improvements of forging technologies, materials and alloy engineering, chemistry, and so on - ushered in the whole field of ballistics and the enormous improvements in artillery weapons, projectiles, aerodynamics, propulsion powders and so on - that scientific development was quickly brought to a high pitch of development. The technologies and therewith the physics have been endlessly tweaked from then until now, but that is the point: the basic principles were quickly established, everything else was tweaking.
What NASA's DART mission seems to have done, in other words, is to suggest that we're on the verge of a similar period in "celestial ballistics," if I may so put it. The questions to be answered - at least from this "ballistics standpoint" - are intriguing, and the article has already indicated some of these. How many of these will be made public in the coming years remains to be seen, but for now rest assured that as the article avers, more missions are being planned, and the phenomenon is going to be studies closely, for in tidally locked systems, it's best to have a thorough understanding of the effects of kinetic bombardment before one actually begins the kinetic bombardment.
See you on the flip side...
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