Previously, Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the National Space Administration of China, said in an interview with CCTV that my country is starting to form a near-Earth asteroid defense system. "We strive to implement a threat to a certain asteroid at the end of the 14th Five-Year P

It is reported that from the evening of today (8th) to the morning of the 9th, the sky will stage a super bright Jupiter "accompanied" the bright moon.

Astronomical science experts said that as long as the weather is sunny, the public can enjoy the beautiful pictures of super bright Jupiter and a convex moon in the southeast sky.

DART impact mission simulation animation

Star and moon will soon perform a romantic "symphony", but space is also full of dangers, especially those celestial bodies rushing toward the earth. Last month, NASA's "Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)" spacecraft successfully hit a near-Earth asteroid called Dimorphos, trying to change its orbit through kinetic impacts.

DART is the first mission to actively impact asteroids, but it will not be the last one.

Previously, Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the China National Space Administration, said in an interview with CCTV that my country is starting to establish a near-Earth asteroid defense system. "We strive to implement a threat to a certain asteroid at the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan or in 2025 or 2026, to conduct close observations and close impacts, and to change its orbit to conduct technical experiments. This will truly respond to the threat of asteroid extraterrestrial bodies to the earth's homeland in the future and truly make new contributions to our China."

"Strike the stone with eggs" Human beings enter a new era of defending the earth

"We are entering a new era of human beings, in which we may have the ability to protect ourselves from dangerous asteroid impacts." The head of NASA's Planetary Science Department said, "We have never had this ability before."

On September 26, local time, the DART spacecraft hit a near-Earth asteroid called Dimorphos in an attempt to change its orbit. This is a smaller asteroid in a near-Earth dual asteroid system with a diameter of about 160 meters and a distance of about 11 million kilometers from the Earth. When the impact occurred, the DART spacecraft operated at about 22,530 kilometers per hour.

hit Dimofus 11 seconds before impact. As the DART spacecraft continues to advance, the blurred dots slowly turn into a clear, rough spherical rock.

, the screen was covered with gravel. This is also the last complete image sent back by DART. Dimofus, taken by the DART spacecraft 1 second before the impact, was incomplete because the DART spacecraft was destroyed due to the impact during the transmission process.

According to Associated Press , on September 29 local time, NASA released new photos taken by Hubble and Weber Space Telescope .

NASA released three different views of the spacecraft hitting the asteroid

Images show that after the Dimofus asteroid was hit, a "giant pit" appeared. The impact caused the rock flow to splash into space, showing bright radiant light. The asteroid presents a spot of light, and behind it is a long, bright "wisdom tail". This "Hui Tai" stretches for more than 9,600 kilometers.

The ground telescope also observed synchronously that the DART spacecraft successfully hit Dimofus, and you can see that a large amount of dust was stirred up near the celestial bodies.

NASA said that according to the images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, the asteroid's brightness tripled after being hit. The Hubble and Webb telescopes will continue to conduct observations in the coming weeks, and scientists won't know the exact changes until November.

"Worrying to the Sky" The movie has been reflected in reality many times

In the movie, humans have expressed their concerns about the crash of the earth countless times.

movie " Wandering Earth ", Liu Peiqiang, played by , ,

, in the movie "Don't look up", an asteroid hit the earth and caused the end of the world

, in the movie " Alone Moon , Dugu Yue, played by Shen Teng, , sacrificially slaughtered himself to blow up meteorite , avoiding the earth being hit by it

, but this concern is not groundless.According to Global Science, in 1994, a comet called Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter. The comet split into 21 pieces before the impact, the largest piece of the impact was as powerful as 6×10¹² tons, which is equivalent to 600 times the reserve of human nuclear weapons . The scars left on Jupiter's surface are larger than the entire earth.

In the early morning of February 15, 2013, an asteroid about the size of a house entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia.

What's even more terrifying is that in 2013, an asteroid with a diameter of 20 meters exploded nearly 30 kilometers above Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, with a power of about 450,000 tons of TNT, equivalent to a W88 nuclear warhead, causing 1,600 people to be injured. Earlier, about 65 million years ago, dinosaurs embarked on the road to extinction due to meteorites. Today, humans have much more advanced technology than dinosaurs.

Near-Earth objects known to humans, statistics as of January 2018.

In the solar system, if a small celestial body's orbit is partly located between 0.983 and 1.3 times astronomical units (the distance from the earth to the sun), then it will be classified as a near-earth object (NEO), such an orbit makes it possible to approach the earth. If the orbit of a NIO crosses the earth and has a diameter greater than 140 meters, it is a potentially threatening object (PHO). At present, humans have discovered 29,000 near-Earth celestial bodies, of which 2,270 are potentially threatening celestial bodies.

is also because of this that a bold and sci-fi "Planetary Defense" strategy was born. People hope that after discovering asteroids that pose a threat to the earth, they can take the initiative to attack and use aircraft to impact the asteroids, thereby changing their operating routes and avoiding collisions with the earth. The "Double Asteroid Redirection Test" performed by DART mentioned above is the first experiment in the planetary defense strategy.

DART impact real-time back-relay image

impact experiment is not just to protect the earth. When people have incomplete understanding of space, the test of asteroid impact is very valuable experimental data and can also help us better understand space.

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