Speaker 1
on the show, it's time for the briefing chat, whele we discuss a couple of articles that have been hilated in the nature briefing. Shamly,
Speaker 2
what have you found for us to discuss this week? A very dramatic, some might say, cinematic, story written up in an article on nature, and it's about nassa's plans to crash a spaceship into an asteroid.
Speaker 1
Ok, so the way you've phrase that makes it sound intentional. So what are the reasons that nassa are crashing a
Speaker 3
spacecraft into an asteroid? Grand and exciting reasons. So this is a bit of sort of future proofing,
Speaker 2
starting to test something that we hope we won't need very soon. But the idea is to find out whether, by smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid, we could actually change the course of an asteroid with one day, the possibility being that we might need to do that if there was, for example, an asteroid on a collision course with earth.
Speaker 1
Oh, i see. That makes a lot of sense. So well, when's this happening? And how much do you need to, i guess, push an asteroid away
Speaker 3
to save the earth from a potential killer? Well, you'll glad to know that they're not testing it on any actual killer asteroids, nor
Speaker 2
are they anticipating any imminent killer asteroids. But of course, much as the probability of a huge asteroid coming and hitting earth might be very, very low, that doesn't mean it might not happen. So they want to be ready. And this is basically just a first try to see if it's even possible. So, you know, how much you would need to move the asteroid would depend on where it's pointing and and how much it weighs. But they have picked an innocent rock some way away from earth that supposes no threat at all to test out this sort of collision nudging mechanism, and are planning to launch this spacecraft to day, possibly, depending on when you're listening to this podcast listeners. But 20 third of november was the planned launch date. And then, in sort of less than a year from now, will hopefully slam into this asteroid, and nassa will be there looking at whether the asteroid changes course, by how much, and what kind of debrise is flung out from this collision.
