Spacecraft to hit at 9km/s, equivalent to over 26 times the speed of sound near sea level and nearly 50 per cent faster than Nasa’s mission.

Spacecraft to hit at 9km/s, equivalent to over 26 times the speed of sound near sea level and nearly 50 per cent faster than Nasa’s mission

  • chuckleslord@lemmy.worldEnglish
    141·
    2 months ago

    Holy shit! China invented the speed of sound in space for this test? You’d think that’d be terrible for rockets, what with all the shit that’ll slow you down now, but it’s important that that asteroid knows what hit it.

    (This is a dumb joke about using “Mach” as a speed outside of an atmosphere)

  • Soulphite@reddthat.comEnglish
    163·
    2 months ago

    How bout we defend this planet from ourselves from ourselves? We’re destroying this fucking planet on our own.

    • BestBouclettes@jlai.luEnglish
      32·
      2 months ago

      I mean, it’s also important to be able to defend ourselves from asteroid impacts. So it’s a welcome effort.

    • dudeface@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      There is people working on that also

      We will probably not action enough and will need to fuck with the atmosphere but something will happen

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    2·
    2 months ago

    It’s good that it will have two parts of the mission, the impacter and the observer, but the article doesn’t mention if the measuring probe will get there first and determine any specifics of where to impact based on those readings, or if it’s just seeing the impact and afterwards and scientists will work backwards. Part of an actual deflection mission would be to know the rock you’re moving well inside and out way before doing anything. If this is a rubble pile type asteroid it will give a lot different results (and be harder to “stop”) than something more solid and/or metallic.

    Also, “blowing it up” is much harder than it sounds, and if too late it could be in some ways worse than leaving it a single body to impact Earth, as enough large objects all reentering at once could be a major heating event in that area, potentially affecting more over a wider part. The movie version where the two halves split and narrowing miss the planet is total fiction.

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    Dang.

    I had to scrounge for a video topic last week, and there’s so many interesting tech stories this morning that I’m going to be covered for the next month. Bonkers.

    Giant space mirrors, and thieves hijacking data center supplies, and now asteroid defense. Awesome.

  • Brem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    514·
    2 months ago

    Feel free to target me instead.

    Even if you are on the up, China, we already saw how that turns out. I don’t care how old you are, China… you’re acting like a nation who just learned how to be cool & sexy.

    Have some patience & blow up asteroids when you are ready…

    …don’t just blow up asteroids because you got into the space game hundreds of years after inventing gunpowder. We know you’re cool. Just be you. You don’t have to prove shit to anyone!