Asteroids

2022

Spacecraft purposefully crashed into an asteroid 11 million km from Earth and knocked it off course

At the end of September 2022, a spacecraft NASA (mission, DART from Double Asteroid Redirection Test) successfully crashed into the asteroid Dimorf at a distance of 10.9 million km from Earth, moving at a speed of 22.5 thousand km/h. The last pictures that the device managed to show are the approaching surface of a rocky cosmic body. NASA launched its DART spacecraft in November 2021. More. here

China begins to build the most powerful radar to protect against asteroids

In mid-July 2022, construction began on an active high-definition long-range space surveillance facility codenamed China Fuyan in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing (China). The project is designed to protect the Earth from space threats, an array of more than 20 large radar antennas will track dangerous asteroids. Read more here.

California startup raises $13 million to mine platinum on asteroids

On May 26, 2022, Huntington Beach-based California startup Astroforge aims to become the first company to bring resources from asteroids to Earth. For these purposes, the company raised $13 million in seed financing. Read more here.

The largest asteroids near the Earth. Infographics

The distance between the Earth and the largest asteroids that are closest to our planet in 2022

2021

Launching a kamikaze probe to shoot down asteroids in the United States

At the end of November 2021, the United States launched the first planetary defense mission of its kind for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, sending a space probe to an intentional collision with an asteroid. The Falcon 9 Raketa carrier with the DART space kamikaze probe launched from the Vandenberg Cosmodrome in California. Read more here.

Russia is developing a rocket to protect the Earth from asteroids

Russian scientists are working on a project for a space complex aimed at protecting the Earth from falling space bodies, the press service ^[1] the Scientific Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering (TsNIImash) said. Russia is^[2]

"The leadership of NIIMash JSC and South Ural State University (SUSU) discussed issues of expanding cooperation to create a new space complex aimed at protecting the Earth from falling space bodies. Today, scientists from the State Rocket Center named after Academician V.P. Makeev are working on this project together with engineers from SUSU and NIIMash JSC," the message says.

The project of a reusable single-stage space launch vehicle was proposed by the State Missile Center named after Academician V.P. Makeev. SUSU is working on the possibility of creating it. It is assumed that the rocket will deliver up to seven tons of payload to Earth orbit. Its interflight service time will be 24 hours. The first prototype is planned to be tested in 2028.

2020: Roscosmos is creating technology for landing a ship on an asteroid

In early August 2020, it became known about the development of the technology for landing a spacecraft on an asteroid begun by Roscosmos.

The difficulty is how to cling to an asteroid. Nevertheless, this task is understandable to our engineers, and such work begins to be carried out by enterprises on an initiative basis, - RIA Novosti quotes the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin.

According to him, the specialists of the state corporation know how to solve the problem, and they can create technology until 2030. At the same time, Rogozin did not specify the asteroid on which Roscosmos wants to achieve the landing of a manned spacecraft. Asteroids, as a rule, consist of metals and rock, having sizes from small grains to several hundred kilometers.

Development of technology for landing a ship on an asteroid from Roscosmos

As the agency reminds, earlier the landing of astronauts on an asteroid was planned at NASA, but they abandoned these plans in favor of resuming flights to the moon.

In 2014, the European probe Philae made a soft landing on comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In 2018-2019, as part of the Japanese Habuyasa-2 mission, modules Rover-1A, Rover-1B, MASCOT, and then the probe of the same name, sat on the asteroid Ryugu.

The importance of such missions is high, since, according to some reports, it was the asteroids that regularly hit the young Earth that caused the birth and evolution of life on our planet.

Dmitry Rogozin in early August 2020 also announced that Russia plans to implement a project to protect the Earth from asteroid-comet danger. True, he did not go into details regarding this initiative.

Finally, it was noted that Roscosmos expects to make the launches of automatic spacecraft to the moon annual. This will allow us to work out all the technologies associated with landing on the lunar surface, and get security guarantees when conducting a future manned flight to a natural satellite of our planet.^[3]

Notes