De dreiging van asteroïden die de mens de dinosauriërs achterna sturen is een acute gedachte bij veel rampzaligheid overwegende overheden.

Zodat het bijna onvermijdelijk was dat een club als NASA op een dag zou besluiten te gaan testen wat ze er tegen zou kunnen doen, als de nood aan de vallende ster[1] komt. Welnu:

Asteroids orbit the Sun and sometimes come close to Earth. When these space rocks come within 30 million miles of Earth, NASA calls them Near-Earth objects (NEOs). On Nov. 23, the space agency plans to launch a spacecraft into Earth’s orbit that will eventually slam into an asteroid about a year from now, hoping to alter the space rock’s course.

NASA is currently making launch preparations for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft to be catapulted into Earth’s orbit via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 23.

NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson wrote in a press release: 

“DART will be the first demonstration of the ‘kinetic impactor’ technique in which a spacecraft deliberately collides with a known asteroid at high speed to change the asteroid’s motion in space.

“This technique is thought to be the most technologically mature approach for mitigating a potentially hazardous asteroid, and it will help planetary defense experts refine asteroid kinetic impactor computer models, giving insight into how we could deflect potentially dangerous near-Earth objects in the future.”

NASA hopes the impact of DART will slightly alter Dimorphos’ trajectory, causing it to have a new orbit. Here’s an infographic of the mission next year that will cost $330 million.
Nancy Chabot, the lead coordinator for DART, said, “you would just give this asteroid a small nudge, which would add up to a big change in its future position, and then the asteroid and Earth wouldn’t be on a collision course.”

En omdat niets voor niets gebeurt, wijs ik er voor de zekerheid even op dat USA en China momenteel in een nieuwe wapenwedloop verwikkeld zijn, wie van hen de ruimte kan gaan domineren. En als trouwe westerlingen noemen we dat:

China’s Weaponization Of Space

En vatten we het samen met:

Wat in de praktijk altijd neer komt op keurig Amerikaanse ministers napraten:

“China has moved aggressively to weaponize space…” These were the words of U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall at the 36th Space Symposium on August 24. De Amerikanen maken zich zorgen:

“Beijing is working to match or exceed US capabilities in space to gain the military, economic, and prestige benefits that Washington has accrued from space leadership… Counterspace operations will be integral to potential military campaigns by the PLA [People’s Liberation Army], and China has counterspace weapons capabilities intended to target US and allied satellites. Beijing continues to train its military space elements and field new destructive and nondestructive ground- and space-based antisatellite (ASAT) weapons.”

China is ook veel te open over haar strategische doelen:

In 2007, China conducted its first test of an anti-satellite missile, destroying one of its own weather satellites, creating the second-largest collection of space debris in history.
China’s 2015 defense white paper had already formally designated space as a new domain of warfare. Also in 2015, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) established the Strategic Support Force (SSF), which brought together outer space, electromagnetic space and cyberspace under one command, indicating “the PLA’s prioritization of these critical areas of warfare.”

Daar worden de Amerikanen altijd een beetje paranoïde van, volgens het principe: zo de waard is, zo ziet hij zijn gasten.

Maar goed, maar goed. Of opa Biden dat snapt is een reële vraag. Als we het dan toch over dino’s hebben.

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Voor wie zich afvraagt waarover we het hier hebben, in verband met dino’s, kan zichzelf hier van meer info voorzien over Chicxulub.