NASA, smash

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission published the first view of its target last week, a binary asteroid called Didymos. And for those who don't remember our previous coverage, the $325 million mission involves launching a custom spacecraft towards Didymos... and then smashing them together.

🤔 Ummm, why?... To test diverting an impact from Earth. Asteroids are immensely powerful, with the ability to greatly alter the course of all living things – just ask the dinosaurs. And if you’re looking for some hard numbers to communicate their majesty, look no further than ~12,800 years ago.

A group of scientists and historians theorize a giant meteorite struck Earth around that time, all but wiping out human civilization and most animal species. According to the group, the impact:

• Incinerated ~10% of the Earth’s entire biomass, due to its launching of burning ejectorate that led to widespread wildfires.
• Instantly liquidized the ice caps at the North Pole, creating a tsunami wave ~1,000 feet tall that flooded an area the size of Europe and China combined.

And if that wasn’t enough, debris from the impact combined with ash from the fires to block out the Sun completely, sending the planet into a 1,200-year Ice Age. So yeah… avoiding that is kind of a big deal.

👀 Looking ahead… The official DART collision is scheduled for September 26.