NASA will crash the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, a golf cart-sized spacecraft, into the asteroid on Tuesday. Dimorphos, located eleven million kilometers away. This first test planetary defense It will test technology that could be used to defend Earth from a possible impact from space.
Dimorphos poses no danger to our planet, but if an asteroid of its size and characteristics (supposedly an aggregate of rocks) did, it would cause an unimaginable disaster. “It would wipe out all existing life in an area equivalent to the entire province of Madrid,” says Isabel Herreros, a researcher at the Center for Astrobiology (CAB-CSC-INTA).
The crash would leave a crater several kilometers in diameter. Fortunately, no known asteroid larger than 140 meters has a significant chance of hitting Earth in the next 100 years, but not all are localized. It is estimated that, as of last August, only 40% of those rocks have been discovered.
75% of the large asteroids -about 800-, those of more than a kilometer capable of causing a planetary catastrophe, are already located and none of them have a dangerous orbit. It is suspected that almost 300 other giants are still hiding, but due to their size, they will be easy to spot if they get close. However, the smaller ones are also problematic. An object of 20 or 30 meters could level an entire city. The famous Apophis, 300 meters long, could devastate a region like Catalonia or Extremadura.
devastating consequences
Fortunately, deadly asteroid impacts are rare. Earth is hit by a 60-meter-wide asteroid about once every 1,500 years, while a 400-meter-wide asteroid hits every 100,000 years. However, the consequences would be devastating.
The researchers estimate that only asteroids at least 18 meters in diameter are lethal. Many at the lower end of that spectrum disintegrate in the atmosphere before reaching the planet’s surface, but they strike more frequently than larger asteroids and generate enough heat and explosive energy to do damage. An example is the fireball that exploded in the sky of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, measuring 17 meters high by 15 meters high. It caused almost 1,500 injuries and damage to thousands of buildings.