There are many threats that can wipe the human population or any other species for that matter, off the face of the planet. This may include nuclear warfare, bioengineered pandemics, asteroids, a possible future rogue AI, and so on.
One of these has already been the reason for the extinction of dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. Yes, I am talking about the asteroid impact that wiped out roughly 80 percent of life on Earth.
Such an extinction level event can happen at any time again. Even though the various space agencies of the world try to keep track of as many asteroids as possible that are headed our way, the past has shown that we miss quite a few of these. Luckily for us, they have all missed our planet.
That's why, it is really important that we develop technologies that can help deal with the threat of a huge asteroid and NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will test the redirection of asteroids in space.
The Defender of The Planet
Many ways have been suggested to deal with an asteroid that would be a threat to life on Earth including nuclear weapons. But I think, pushing it out of the way is more realistic and technologically feasible.
To test this, NASA will be smashing a space probe at a speed of roughly 21,000 km/hour at a far off asteroid. The probe will be launched in either 2020 or 2021 and it will reach and hopefully smash into the asteroid in 2022 as it is a really tricky job.
The idea here, is that, even a miniscule amount of change in trajectory of a far off asteroid, would be able to make a large difference over a huge distance and it would miss Earth and safely pass by.
But this would only work for asteroids that are really far off. We would need to be pre-informed about a collision course to Earth years in advance. Also, being able to hit an asteroid over a large distance exactly at the right time requires a high degree of precision.
That's why the DART mission is really important as it will provide valuable data about a brand new technology that could end up being the defender of the planet in the future!