Over and out! The final screen as the 570kg Dart spacecraft hit the 160m-wide moonlet Dimorphos to test whether humanity would be able to alter the orbit of an asteroid threatening the planet. On The Couch thinks maybe we shouldn’t have.
‘Rocky Horror’ aficionados, look away now: some of its catchiest lyrics are about to be abused.
They’re from The Time Warp, which a delicately teetering world could use about now.
“It’s just a jump to the left, and then a step to the ri-i-i-iiiight.” Rights are all-important, so we cannot totally delete the second line. But please, Universe, can we get a huge, soaring, gravity-defying leap to the left and dump the type of right that is wrong and hateful?
Our little 3rd Rock From The Sun is spinning faster towards the horrors of fascism and the couch science research council and its humanities department are Extremely Worried. The learned overseers of peace, respect, care and goodwill are peering from under the coffee table, trying to have their say too.
We were so worried, in fact, that we called Nasa to give them an earful about their astonishing Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart), a mission to save us from being hit by an asteroid and going the way of the dinosaurs.
This was an exceptional display of human brilliance: a small 570kg spacecraft travelled through space for 10 months and then hit the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, only 160m in diameter. It orbits a larger, 780m asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid posed a threat to Earth.
This week, Dart hit Dimorphos at 22 530km/h. Its final moments were captured by a camera called Draco, showing the surface of Dimorphos in close-up detail, before the screen turned red on impact.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/dart-s-final-images-prior-to-impactScientists will now observe Dimorphos, using ground-based telescopes to confirm that the impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos, expected to be by about 1%, or 10 minutes, one of the primary purposes of the test.
If you’re a physics and numbers kinda person, all the science can be found on Nasa’s website.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-dart-mission-hits-asteroid-in-first-ever-planetary-defense-testWhile being in awe at the genius of the international operation ‒ South Africa featured by capturing part of the action on its Atlas telescope ‒ we, as a species, need a do-over and an asteroid would do pretty well as an end and new start.
Our poor planet hovers on the abyss of climate catastrophe and our energy head honcho has his heart and mind, inexplicably perhaps (you can draw your own conclusions), set on fossil fuels, as do other powerful decision-makers. Unless we can make great, quick strides to halt carbon emissions, stop deforestation and kill plastic pollution, some of the biggest contributors to our planet’s awful fate, we face a long-drawn-out demise in drought, floods and heat wave.
At least the asteroid would be quick.
Back to the right: remember when the orange clown rode down that elevator ‒ how I wish (I know, I’m going to hell) it had been a ramp and he’d had a terrible fall ‒ and most of the world laughed when he announced his presidential run?
But instead, he elevated fascism: a political philosophy, movement or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and stands for a centralised autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition, Merriam-Webster reminds us.
TFG broke the US and Boris broke Britain. Italy, Hungary and Poland have fallen, Brazil votes tomorrow, and we are about to be awash in populist promises until 2024.
In France, Spain and Sweden, the far right either leads the opposition or is growing.
To make humans really humankind, we need extreme actions, not ideologies.
The Independent on Saturday
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