Strange world, all the same, where we see NASA “egg heads”, dressed in blue summer camp T-shirts, jumping like goats while watching a 300 million dollar machine crash. against a space pebble named Dimorphos. This high-tech killing game is part of the very scientific discipline of “planetary defense”, which is responsible for studying all possible means of preventing celestial bodies from colliding with our planet. Operation Dart, successfully completed on September 26, involved sending a 600-kilogram probe right into the mile of“an asteroid the size of a football stadium” about 14 million kilometers in space, and to observe if the impact, at nearly 30,000 km / h, deviated its trajectory enough, explains Mashable.
It is important to remember, as this information site does, that Dimorphos did nothing to us and did not threaten us in any way, but that it was targeted by NASA because of its specificities, considered ideal for the experience. Because Dimorphos is not alone up there. It is the small satellite of another much larger asteroid, Didymos, around which it makes a complete revolution in eleven hours and fifty-five minutes. Together, all at their little waltz, the two asteroids make a complete revolution of the sun every two years. So what ? Instead of crashing into a lone celestial object and having to spend millions of dollars and years of observations (which would require another space probe) to verify changes in its galactic course, all it took was