NASA To Nudge Asteroid To Keep It From Threatening Earth

[MechAg94]

I am not sure if this is a bold plan to take care of future problems (since when does our Govt do that?) or someone at NASA decided they are tired of waiting. 

"The U.S. space agency plans to conduct a mission next month to deflect a pair of asteroids far out in deep space to keep them from threatening Earth."
https://www.dailywire.com/news/nasa-to-nudge-asteroid-to-keep-it-from-threatening-earth?utm_campaign=dw_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=housefile&utm_content=non_member_op_ed

Dubbed the DART Mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will send spacecraft to a pair of asteroids — the Didymos binary — on November 24 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

If all goes as planned, DART will smash into one of the two asteroids, known as Didymoon, at roughly 13,500 mph nearly a full year later, on October 2, 2022.

From the comments:

The specter of unintended results looms large.

As someone with zero background in astrophysics but 22 years working for the Federal Gov’t I can guarantee that this will not go as planned.

 

[Jim147]

Yes, SMOD. Let's go Smoden.

[WLJ]

DC is that away ----->
And since we have two
California is over there ---->

[RoadKingLarry]

Hope springs eternal.

[tokugawa]

I don't suppose any of them read "Lucifers Hammer"?

[kgbsquirrel]

 

[sumpnz]

What can possibly go wrong?  How hard can it be?

[230RN]

Apology:  I didn't read OP's link deeply enough to notice that it also referenced operation "Deep Impact."  Careless of me.  Let that be my worst mistake of the month.
.....................
If you recall, we did hit a comet with project "Deep Impact" on Independence Day 2005:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html

We even got a picture of it:


^*

We also landed on an asteroid IIRC but it was in a crevasse and its signals were blocked by the crevasse walls or it fell over or something.

I guess "landed" is the wrong word... maybe "asteroided" would be better. 

So, despite the wisecracks, it would seem not only do-able but done-able.

Of course, there were mid-course corrections, but I like to think of it as 0.000000000001 MOA shootin'.  Or something like that without doing the actual calculations. 

Terry, 230RN

* Another example of velocity = temperature.  (I wonder if any of the folks working on fusion reactors have thought of that --protons are +, electrons are - and opposites attract. I am seeing a bunch of hydrogen ions (protons) stuck on  a highly negatively charged substrate with other protons (hydrogen ions) being attracted to it at high enough velocity to cause them to fuse.  Just a thought I developed a while ago.)

The impactor was mainly copper with certain specific alloying elements so we could make accurate spectrographic measurements.