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© Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.NASA spacecraft crashes into asteroid in defense test
By MARCIA DUNN CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
10 Comments
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Hervé L'Eisa
It's on live TV now. The impact should be at about 8:15am (Tokyo time).
Speed
Watch. They're going to accidentally send meteor fragments hurtling toward Earth. I know. I've seen the movie.
wallace
Watched live on BBC. The ground crew was ecstatic with joy.
Gaijinjland
Seems like a giant waste of recourses and money. Pretty sure all the space junk we’ve left up there is a bigger immediate threat.
AramaTaihenNoYouDidnt
I don't know - sounds controversy to me. NASA claims its inception 10 months ago when we all were facing peril moments with the pandemic at large. I for one never heard of this "program" till now.
rcch
“ Earlier in the day, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson reminded people via Twitter that, “No, this is not a movie plot.” He added in a prerecorded video: ”We’ve all seen it on movies like ‘Armageddon,’ but the real-life stakes are high." “
heheh
Armageddon, there it is (!)
“ Complain all you want, you son of a b***. “
heheh
..
Good job, NASA.
:)
JTC
Nudging space rocks one way or another could be used as an ultimate weapon against a foe here on Earth.
virusrex
Indeed another example of the amazing things that have become a reality thanks to scientific discoveries, lots of people are now waiting very exited the data produced by this experiment and what the scientists will tell about how likely this kind of procedure can alter the orbit of asteroids.
Waiting for who knows how many decades (or centuries) for a rock to be already in a collision course with the planet so a nudge could direct it against an specific place? it would be anything but an efficient use of resources, nor exactly something that could be done in secrecy. In that case it would be just better to direct the attack directly towards the real objective in the first place.
painkiller
As the scientists know, there is no need to wait decades (or centuries):
“There are about 2,000 or so near-Earth asteroids which are these asteroids which are defined as getting close to Earth,” Cushing said. “They pass by us on a relatively frequent basis.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/asteroids-passing-close-to-earth-in-upcoming-weeks/ar-AAPzNm8#:~:text=“There%20are%20about%202%2C000%20or%20so%20near-Earth%20asteroids,in%20the%20night%20sky%20without%20a%20good%20telescope.
virusrex
"close to Earth" do not mean human could nudge them to a direct hit with the planet, nor that they could do any damage because of their size, as the article mentions explicitly, "It’s passing very, very far away from the Earth from a human perspective..." which means it is not possible to use them as weapons as described, much less in a practical way.
Why offer a reference that clearly contradicts your point?