Belfast astronomer at ground control on mission to stop asteroid strike on Earth
Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, from Queen’s University Belfast, has recently returned from ground control of ESA’s Hera mission.
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Your support makes all the difference.A Belfast-based astronomer has said a planetary defence mission with which he is involved will help scientists gather new data to potentially enable them to deflect asteroids which could crash into Earth
Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, from the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, has recently returned from ground control of the European Space Agency (ESA) Hera mission at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany.
Hera, which was blasted into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, is seeking to gather new data and insights about how to deflect asteroids.
In September 2022, the Nasa Dart mission hit the small asteroid moon Dimorphos and changed its trajectory, as the first test of “kinetic impactor” technology designed to deflect asteroids.
Asteroid impacts on Earth are a natural phenomenon, it is a natural disaster just like earthquakes and volcanoes, hurricanes and tidal waves
Hera’s job is to measure the mass of Dimorphos moved by Dart and discover the precise effect of the impact on the moon.
Speaking about the launch, Mr Fitzsimmons said: “Probably the tensest time was not the launch itself, when the spacecraft was released from the Falcon 9 booster.
“And then we were waiting for acquisition of signal because if we don’t hear that signal from Hera, we have no way of communicating with the spacecraft, and then controlling it from then on.
“But thankfully everything worked out fine and the spacecraft is in perfect health.”
Prof Fitzsimmons said: “At the moment it is not directly heading towards the asteroids that we are targeting, it is heading towards Mars, because we are going to use Mars’s gravity to redirect Hera into a rendezvous trajectory, and we will finally get to the asteroids that we are targeting at the end of the year 2026.”
He said the idea of running a spacecraft into an asteroid at high velocity to change its course has been around for a long time.
He added: “It is one of three techniques we think we can try. We call it the kinetic impact technique because we are using the energy associated with the motion to move the asteroid.
“We have a couple of other ideas, for example we have something called a gravity tractor, where if we can hover a spacecraft close to a small asteroid then simply the force of gravity, the gravitational pull by that small spacecraft on that small asteroid, will slowly move it into a different trajectory without touching it.
“Going the other way, we have what we call blast deflection, and this is the thing you normally see in movies, where you launch a large explosive device, probably a nuclear device, and explode that.
It is amazing to think that this, albeit rare, natural disaster, we could prevent entirely, we could stop an impact actually happening in the first place
“You don’t destroy the asteroid, you explode it above the surface of the asteroid, and that vaporises part of the surface, and that vaporised asteroid goes one way, pushing the asteroid the other way, due to the laws of physics.
“That is something we could try in the future but we’d rather not use nuclear devices. We have had a treaty since 1967 not to use nuclear devices in outer space and we’d like to keep it that way.”
Prof Fitzsimmons said while most large asteroids have now been discovered by astronomers, there is still a risk to Earth from smaller asteroids.
He said: “Asteroid impacts on Earth are a natural phenomenon, it is a natural disaster just like earthquakes and volcanoes, hurricanes and tidal waves. Now, all those happen much more frequently.
“Asteroid impacts don’t happen that often but when they do they have quite an effect, at least over the local area, and possibly they can have global effects.
“This has been happening ever since the Earth was created 4.6 billion years ago, and if we do nothing they will happen again in the future.
“Look at the dinosaurs, they were wiped out partially, if not solely, by a large asteroid hitting them.
“They didn’t have a space programme, we do and we are at the stage where we could prevent this type of natural disaster.
“That is important to realise, because we still can’t prevent a volcanic eruption or an earthquake or a hurricane, but it is amazing to think that this, albeit rare, natural disaster, we could prevent entirely, we could stop an impact actually happening in the first place.
“That is a fantastic thing for our civilisation to have reached that point, so why not do it?”
He added: “At some point in the future we know we will discover an asteroid that is going to hit us after that discovery point.
“At that point we really will have to do something. The great thing is that all the work done by all the teams, all the engineers and scientists in their fields, are working towards that point.
“We are getting more and more confident, not complacent, that if we do things right and we discover that future impact early enough, we will be able to prevent it.”