Last week, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft as part of its ‘planetary defence’ programme. Set up a few years ago, this programme is dedicated to protecting us from potential end-of-world events that may be triggered by really large rocks colliding with our planet. Which, we can all agree, is a task as vital as the desk job that needs people to respond to emails at 3 AM on a Sunday for the latest startup unicorn to get a billion dollars in funding ‘by EOD’.
If you are wondering whether the current DART mission is an attempt to intercept an asteroid bringing our doom, you may rest assured. It has been 66 million years since an asteroid big enough to cause a mass extinction event hit Earth (that one wiped out most dinosaurs)1. In fact, the intended targets of the DART spacecraft are a couple of asteroids minding their own business, millions of miles away from Earth. As per NASA, the DART mission is an experiment to test whether manoeuvring a spacecraft to smash into an asteroid can significantly alter the asteroid’s trajectory; a helpful trick if we ever need to knock an Earth-bound asteroid off its course.
Some, however, believe that the truth lies somewhere else. They say that the DART mission was conceptualised on a movie night when NASA employees watched the 1998 Hollywood classic Armageddon, had more vodka than can be considered safe and then started a prank which soon spiralled out of control2.
And if that is indeed what happened, then who can blame them? Armageddon is a fantastic movie. It kicks off with NASA discovering that a massive asteroid is going to hit Earth in three weeks. A bit of a nuisance admittedly but the world’s brightest scientists can surely come up with a foolproof plan? Of course, they can. Recruit a team of oil drillers (led by Bruce Willis) and send them up into space to drill into the asteroid, put a nuclear bomb inside it and then blow it up (this is the spoiler-free summary). The movie also poses one of the most important scientific and philosophical questions of our times: Why did NASA train oil drillers to become astronauts rather than training astronauts to become oil drillers3? If you are unfamiliar with the movie, I would strongly urge you to watch it. The one-line plot summary I outlined above, cannot do justice to it.
The idea of nuking objects in space is so outrageous, Hollywood decided that one movie was not enough. Released in the same year as Armageddon, Deep Impact had an incoming comet as the villain. While Deep Impact adopted a (slightly) more sobering approach to the smash-rock-save-humanity plotline, its story also revolved around attempts to blow up the comet. Honestly, the fact that movie studios lapped up plots involving bombs exploding in space doesn’t evoke surprise, but you wouldn’t expect anyone else to give credence to such ideas. Would you?
In 1999, Keay Davidson published a biography of the popular astrophysicist and TV personality Carl Sagan. During his research, Davidson discovered that in the late 1950s, Carl Sagan had been involved in a classified project (titled ‘Project A119’) to examine the feasibility of detonating a thermonuclear device on the Moon. This revelation obviously caused massive furore and a year later, de-classified papers and interviews given by the scientist who led Project A119, confirmed that going nuclear on the Moon was indeed a distinct possibility during the Cold War.
Superpowers grappling for world domination are not known to be gracious losers, and the successful launch of USSR’s Sputnik satellite in 1957 was widely proclaimed as evidence of the United States having fallen behind in the space race. All eyes were now set on the next target: the Moon. Desperate to regain control, the United States channelled their inner petulant brat and decided that if they couldn’t have it, they would just blow it up4. Project A119 was established to ‘create an explosion and lunar mushroom cloud’, which would be visible from Earth and stamp America’s authority (quite literally) on the heavens. That may seem like a disproportionate and grossly extravagant flex to most people, but let us remember that this is the country which produced Armageddon.
Thankfully, Project A119 was soon abandoned and the 1960s saw the United States devoting its considerable resources towards finding more constructive ways to win the space race - by planning to send humans, instead of nuclear payloads, to the Moon, for example. That, it is safe to say, was an infinitely more popular and successful venture.
The DART spacecraft is expected to reach its target asteroids in September 2022. If things go as planned, it will crash into the asteroid and we will know whether the experiment to nudge an asteroid off its path proved successful.
But what if it fails? What if we find out that flying a spacecraft into an asteroid does not produce the desired effect? What if we then discover that a meaty chunk of space rock is headed towards our planet and drilling a bomb into it is the only option left to save humanity? One can only hope that by then we would have had sufficient time to know whether it is easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts rather than training astronauts to become oil drillers.
But don’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet. According to NASA, only 40% of the asteroids that are capable of causing significant damage have been found to date and they are all non-threatening. This means there is a 60% chance there could actually be an undetected asteroid hurtling towards us right this instant. With any luck, it will hit (an unoccupied) Antilla and rid us of that eyesore
While I have been unable to verify this highly plausible claim, it is reported that NASA had invited Bruce Willis to the launch of the DART mission.
In a commentary track about the movie, Ben Affleck says that he had asked the director, Michael Bay, “….why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers, and he told me to shut the fuck up…”
The USSR is also said to have contemplated sending a nuclear bomb to the moon in a show of strength. Divided by the Iron Curtain but united by hubris.
Harry will get it done. Can you vouch for the astronauts to get it done?