Between September 26 and October 1, NASA will carry out an experiment in which a spacecraft will collide with an asteroid to try to slightly change its trajectory and thus test whether the method would serve to avoid a hypothetical collision of such a celestial body with the

Earth

.

Land.

Specifically, the DART spacecraft will collide with the asteroid

Dimorphosa

at a speed of 6.5 kilometers per second, and it is estimated that the energy of the impact will be comparable to the explosion of three tons of trinitrotoliene (TNT).

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Science.

DART: this is the first mission that will try to divert an asteroid from its orbit

  • Writing: ÁNGEL DÍAZMadrid

  • Drafting: E. AMADE AND A. MATILLA |

    INFOGRAPHICS

DART: this is the first mission that will try to divert an asteroid from its orbit

It is the first large-scale mission in history that will test Earth's defense technology against potential asteroid or comet impacts.

The spacecraft built for the mission launched toward Dimorphosa on November 24.

The lunar base, closer

Another attractive mission that NASA has planned imminently is the launch of the

Artemis

lunar exploration system on the 29th of this month, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

It is an uncrewed flight test that will provide a base for space exploration, and the first step in establishing a lunar base.

During this flight, the spacecraft will travel about 450,600 kilometers from Earth in a journey of about three weeks.

In addition, Crew-5, a joint mission between NASA and SpaceX, will take off from the Kennedy Space Center on September 29 with a Russian astronaut,

Anna Kikina

, along with NASA's

Nicole Mann

and

Josh Cassada

and Japanese

Koichi Wakata

. .

They will travel to the International Space Station for a six-month scientific mission in its microgravity laboratory.

Finally, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will launch the

JPSS-2 weather and climate satellite mission

on November 1 , which will circle the Earth from pole to pole and cross the Equator about 14 times a day, providing global coverage. Complete twice a day.

From 824 kilometers high, it will collect data that will inform weather forecasts, extreme weather events and global warming.

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