A Quebecer and his NASA crew managed to hit an asteroid with a satellite on Monday and deflect it from its path, a first for mankind.
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“History even if we don’t save the Earth because there is no threat! But thanks to this, we will be a little more prepared in the event of a disaster,” said Julie Bellerose, chief navigation officer of the US space agency NASA.
The satellite was launched at 7.14 pm on Monday DART, Led by him from the state of Maryland in the US, it collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, about 11 million kilometers from our planet.
Thanks photo
Julie Bellerose
Julie Pellirose’s team, The Jet Propulsion LaboratoryThe entire world can see firsthand the impact and explosion of happiness of NASA employees.
World premiere
A first-of-its-kind mission could see how Earth could be protected from space rocks that threaten humanity, explains Qubesser.
However, it will take almost a month to find out how far the 160-meter-diameter asteroid was veered off its path after the impact at 20,000 km/h.
Photo: AFP
The event was broadcast live by NASA. Basically, we see the images sent by the Dart satellite just before the asteroid impact, and we see, in a nutshell, Julie Bellerose’s team impatient for the collision.
“It will be calculated with telescopes on Earth, and depending on the visibility of the telescope it will take days and weeks of observation,” says one person who has been on the job for nearly four years.
Living in space
For Nathalie Ouellet, an astrophysicist at the University of Montreal and deputy director of the Exoplanets Research Institute, the task is fascinating.
“It’s a very Hollywood movie, but it shows that humans are no longer a species forced to be on Earth, because our connection to our solar system is becoming more and more important, and we’re more and more connected,” supports one. It is also responsible for communications for the space telescope James Webb In Canada.
“It’s really going to open a new chapter,” he enthuses.
