NASA's DART mission successfully slams into an asteroid | CNN

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A NASA spacecraft has intentionally slammed into an asteroid in humanity’s first test of planetary defense.

The impact occurred at 7:14 p.m. ET greeted by cheers from the mission team in Laurel, Maryland. The DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, launched 10 months ago.

While the asteroid, Dimorphos, was not at risk of impacting Earth, this demonstration could determine how to deflect space rocks that could pose a threat to Earth in the future.

“We’re embarking on a new era of humankind, an era in which we potentially have the capability to protect ourselves from something like a dangerous, hazardous asteroid impact,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division. “What an amazing thing. We’ve never had that capability before.”

A detailed view of Dimorphos can be seen seconds before the DART spacecraft hit the asteroid. NASA

At the time of impact, Didymos and Dimorphos were relatively close to Earth – within 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers). The team estimates that the spacecraft hit the asteroid at a point about 55 feet (17 meters) away from the space rock’s center.

The goal of the spacecraft, in addition to impact, is to affect the motion of an asteroid in space, but DART team members say it will take about two months for scientists to determine if the asteroid’s orbit changed.

The mission is heading for Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Didymos. The asteroid system poses no threat to Earth, NASA officials have said, making it a perfect target to test out a kinetic impact – which may be needed if an asteroid is ever on track to hit Earth.

The event will be the agency’s first full-scale demonstration of deflection technology that can protect the planet.

“For the first time ever, we will measurably change the orbit of a celestial body in the universe,” said Robert Braun, head of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory’s Space Exploration Sector.

INTERACTIVE: One spacecraft’s journey to test Earth’s planetary defenses

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that place them within 30 million miles (48.3 million kilometers) of Earth. Detecting the threat of near-Earth objects, or NEOs, that could cause grave harm is a primary focus of NASA and other space organizations around the world.

Collision course

Astronomers discovered Didymos more than two decades ago. It means “twin” in Greek, a nod to how the asteroid forms a binary system with the smaller asteroid, or moon. Didymos is nearly half a mile (0.8 kilometer) across.

Meanwhile, Dimorphos is 525 feet (160 meters) in diameter, and its name means “two forms.”

On the day of impact, images taken by DRACO will not only reveal our first look at Dimorphos, but the spacecraft will use them to autonomously guide itself for an encounter with the tiny moon.

During the event, these images will stream back to Earth at a rate of one per second, providing a “pretty stunning” look at the moon, said Nancy Chabot, planetary scientist and DART coordination lead at the Applied Physics Laboratory.

At the time of impact, Didymos and Dimorphos will be relatively close to Earth – within 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers).

The spacecraft will accelerate at about 15,000 miles per hour (24,140 kilometers per hour) when it collides with Dimorphos.

The DART spacecraft also revealed what Dimorphos looks like for the very first time.

“It looks adorable, it’s so cute,” said Carolyn Ernst, DRACO Instrument Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab. “It looks in a lot of ways like some of the other small asteroids we’ve seen.”

The egg-shaped asteroid’s surface, covered in boulders, looked similar to Bennu and Ryugu, two other asteroids that were visited by spacecraft in recent years. The scientists suspect that Dimorphos is a rubble pile asteroid made of loosely bound rocks.

The team is eager to learn more about the impact crater left behind, which they estimate to be about 33 to 65 feet (10 to 20 meters) in size. There may even be shattered pieces of the spacecraft in the crater.

It aims to crash into Dimorphos to change the asteroid’s motion in space, according to NASA. This collision will be recorded by LICIACube, or Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, a companion cube satellite provided by the Italian Space Agency.

The briefcase-size CubeSat hitched a ride with DART into space. It recently deployed from the spacecraft and is traveling behind it to record what happens.

Three minutes after impact, the CubeSat will fly by Dimorphos to capture images and video. The video, while not immediately available, will be streamed back to Earth in the weeks and months following the collision.

Protecting the planet

Dimorphos was chosen for this mission because its size is relative to asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. The spacecraft is about 100 times smaller than Dimorphos, so it won’t obliterate the asteroid.

The fast impact will only change Dimorphos’ speed as it orbits Didymos by 1%, which doesn’t sound like a lot – but it will change the moon’s orbital period.

An illustration shows NASA's DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency's LICIACube before the collision with Dimorphos. Steve Gribben/Johns Hopkins APL/NASA

“Sometimes we describe it as running a golf cart into a great pyramid or something like that,” Chabot said. “But for Dimorphos, this really is about asteroid deflection, not disruption. This isn’t going to blow up the asteroid; it isn’t going to put it into lots of pieces.”

The nudge will shift Dimorphos slightly and make it more gravitationally bound to Didymos – so the collision won’t change the binary system’s path around the Earth or increase its chances of becoming a threat to our planet, Chabot said.

Dimorphos completes an orbit around Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. After the impact, that may change to 11 hours and 45 minutes, but follow-up observations will determine how much of a shift occurred.

Astronomers will use ground-based telescopes to observe the binary asteroid system and see how much the orbital period of Dimorphos changed, which will determine if DART was successful.

Space-based telescopes such as Hubble, Webb and NASA’s Lucy mission will also observe the event.

In four years, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will arrive to study Dimorphos, measuring physical properties of the moon, and look at the DART impact and the moon’s orbit.

No asteroids are currently on a direct impact course with Earth, but more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids exist in all shapes and sizes.

The valuable data collected by DART and Hera will contribute to planetary defense strategies, especially the understanding of what kind of force can shift the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid that could collide with our planet.

The DART mission is about to collide with an asteroid | CNN

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On Monday, a NASA spacecraft will deliberately slam into an asteroid called Dimorphos.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, or DART, aims to see if this kind of kinetic impact can help deflect an asteroid posing a threat to Earth.

This illustration shows the DART spacecraft heading toward the asteroid Dimorphos. John Hopkins APL/NASA

“We are moving an asteroid,” said Tom Statler, NASA program scientist for the DART mission. “We are changing the motion of a natural celestial body in space. Humanity has never done that before.”

Here’s what you need to know about this mission.

What exactly is DART?

The DART spacecraft is about the size of a school bus. It has been traveling to reach its asteroid target since launching in November 2021. The spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid system on September 26. Impact is expected at 7:14 p.m. ET.

Where is it going?

The spacecraft is heading for a double-asteroid system, where a tiny “moon” asteroid, named Dimorphos, orbits a larger asteroid, Didymos.

Didymos. which means “twin” in Greek, is roughly 2,560 feet (780 meters) in diameter. Meanwhile, Dimorphos measures 525 feet (160 meters) across, and its name means “two forms.”

At the time of impact, Didymos and Dimorphos will be relatively close to Earth – within 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers).

Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos is at risk of colliding with Earth – before or after the collision takes place.

What will DART do?

DART is going down in a blaze of glory. It will set its sights on Dimorphos, accelerate to 13,421 miles per hour (21,600 kilometers per hour) and crash into the moon nearly head-on.

The spacecraft is about 100 times smaller than Dimorphos, so it won’t obliterate the asteroid.

Instead, DART will try to change the asteroid’s speed and path in space. The mission team has compared this collision to a golf cart crashing into one of the Great Pyramids – enough energy to leave an impact crater.

The impact will change Dimorphos’ speed by 1% as it orbits Didymos. It doesn’t sound like much, but doing so will change the moon’s orbital period.

The nudge will shift Dimorphos slightly and make it more gravitationally bound to Didymos – so the collision won’t change the binary system’s path around the Earth or increase its chances of becoming a threat to our planet.

What will we get to see?

The spacecraft will share its view of the double-asteroid system through an instrument known as the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation, or DRACO.

This imager, which serves as DART’s eyes, will allow the spacecraft to identify the double-asteroid system and distinguish which space object it’s supposed to strike.

This instrument also is a high-resolution camera that aims to capture images of the two asteroids to be streamed back to Earth at a rate of one image per second in what will appear nearly like a video. You can watch the live stream on NASA’s website, beginning at 6 p.m. ET Monday.

Didymos and Dimorphos will appear as pinpricks of light about an hour before impact, gradually growing larger and more detailed in the frame.

Dimorphos has never been observed before, so scientists can finally take in its shape and the appearance of its surface.

We should be able to see Dimorphos in exquisite detail before DART crashes into it. Given the time it takes for images to stream back to Earth, they will be visible for eight seconds before a loss of signal occurs and DART’s mission ends – if it was successful.

The spacecraft also has its own photojournalist along for the ride.

A briefcase-size satellite from the Italian Space Agency hitched a ride with DART into space. Called the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, it detached from the spacecraft on September 11. The satellite is traveling behind DART to record what happens from a safe perspective.

Three minutes after impact, LICIACube will fly by Dimorphos to capture images and video of the impact plume and maybe even spy on the impact crater. The CubeSat will turn to keep its cameras pointed at Dimorphos as it flies by.

The images and video, while not immediately available, will be streamed back to Earth in the days and weeks following the collision.

How will we know if the mission was successful?

The LICIACube won’t be the only observer watching. The James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Lucy mission will observe the impact. The Didymos system may brighten as its dust and debris is ejected into space, said Statler, the NASA program scientist.

But ground-based telescopes will be key in determining if DART successfully changed the motion of Dimorphos.

The Didymos system was discovered in 1996, so astronomers have plenty of observations of the system. After the impact, observatories around the world will watch as Dimorphos crosses in front of and moves behind Didymos.

Dimorphos takes 11 hours and 55 minutes to complete an orbit of Didymos. If DART is successful, that time could decrease by 73 seconds, “but we actually think we’re going to change it by about 10 minutes,” said Edward Reynolds, DART project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Statler said he would be surprised if a measurement of the period change came in less than a few days but even more so if it took more than three weeks.

What if DART misses and doesn’t hit the asteroid?

“I’m highly confident that we were going to hit on Monday, and it will be a complete success,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA planetary defense officer.

But if DART misses its proverbial dart board, the team will be ready to ensure the spacecraft is safe and all its information downloaded to figure out why it didn’t hit Dimorphos.

The Applied Physics Laboratory’s Mission Operations Center will intervene if necessary, even though DART will have been operating autonomously for the final four hours of its journey.

It takes 38 seconds for a command to travel from Earth to the spacecraft, so the team can react quickly. The DART team has 21 contingency plans it has rehearsed, said Elena Adams, DART mission systems engineer at the Applied Physics Lab.

Why do we need to test this, and why on this asteroid?

Dimorphos was chosen for this mission because its size is comparable to asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. An asteroid the size of Dimorphos could cause “regional devastation” if it hit Earth.

The asteroid system is “the perfect natural laboratory” for the test, Statler said.

The mission will allow scientists to have a better understanding of the size and mass of each asteroid, which is crucial to understanding near-Earth objects.

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with an orbit that places them within 30 million miles (48.3 million kilometers) from Earth. Detecting the threat of near-Earth objects that could cause grave harm is a primary focus of NASA and other space organizations around the world.

No asteroids are currently on a direct impact course with Earth, but more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids exist in all shapes and sizes.

The valuable data collected by DART will contribute to planetary defense strategies, especially the understanding of what kind of force can shift the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid that could collide with our planet.

Why don’t we just blow up the asteroid, like in ‘Armageddon’?

Movies make combating asteroid approaches seem like a hurried scramble to protect the planet, but “that’s not the way to do planetary defense,” Johnson said. Blowing up an asteroid could be more dangerous because then its pieces could be on a collision course with Earth.

But NASA is considering other methods of changing the motion of asteroids.

The DART spacecraft is considered to be a kinetic impactor that could change the speed and path of Dimorphos. If DART is successful, it could be one tool for deflecting asteroids.

Another option is a gravity tractor, which relies on mutual gravitational attraction between a spacecraft and an asteroid to tug the space rock out of its impacting trajectory into a more benign one, Johnson said.

Another technique is ion beam deflection, or shooting an ion engine at an asteroid for long periods of time until the ions change the asteroid’s velocity and orbit.

But both of these take time.

“Any technique that you can imagine that changes the orbital speed of the asteroid in orbit is a viable technique,” Johnson said.

An international forum called the Space Planning Commission has brought 18 national space agencies together to assess what might be best to deflect an asteroid, depending on its size and path.

Finding populations of hazardous asteroids and determining their sizes are priorities of NASA and its international partners, Johnson said. The design for a space-based telescope called the Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission is currently in review.

Will any other spacecraft fly by Dimorphos in the future?

The Didymos system won’t be lonely for too long. To survey the aftermath of the impact, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will launch in 2024. The spacecraft, along with two CubeSats, will arrive at the asteroid system two years later.

Hera will study both asteroids, measure physical properties of Dimorphos, and examine the DART impact crater and the moon’s orbit, with the aim of establishing an effective planetary defense strategy.

NASA: DART mission successfully changed motion of asteroid ...

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The Double Asteroid Redirection Test successfully changed the trajectory of the asteroid Dimorphos when the NASA spacecraft intentionally slammed into the space rock on September 26, according to the agency.

The DART mission, a full-scale demonstration of deflection technology, was the world’s first conducted on behalf of planetary defense. The mission was also the first time humanity intentionally changed the motion of a celestial object in space.

Prior to impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit its larger parent asteroid Didymos. Astronomers used ground-based telescopes to measure how Dimorphos’ orbit changed after impact.

Now, it takes Dimorphos 11 hours and 23 minutes to circle Didymos. The DART spacecraft changed the moonlet asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes.

Initially, astronomers expected DART to be a success if it shortened the trajectory by 10 minutes.

“All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. After all, it’s the only one we have,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us. NASA has proven we are serious as a defender of the planet. This is a watershed moment for planetary defense and all of humanity, demonstrating commitment from NASA’s exceptional team and partners from around the world.”

The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of debris blasted away from the surface of Dimorphos 285 hours after impact on October 8. NASA/ESA/STScI/Hubble

Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos pose a threat to Earth, but the double-asteroid system was a perfect target to test deflection technology, according to the DART team.

“For the first time ever, humanity has changed the orbit of a planetary object,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA.

“As new data come in each day, astronomers will be able to better assess whether, and how, a mission like DART could be used in the future to help protect Earth from a collision with an asteroid if we ever discover one headed our way.”

The DART team continues to gather data by observing the double-asteroid system, and the orbital measurement may become more precise in the future. Currently, there is an uncertainty of plus or minus two minutes.

A new image of Dimorphos, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows that the debris trail’s cometlike tail has split into two. Scientists are still working to understand the significance of the split.

The team is now focusing on measuring how much momentum was transferred from DART to Dimorphos. At the time of impact, the spacecraft was moving at about 14,000 miles per hour (22,530 kilometers per hour). Astronomers will analyze the amount of rocks and dust blasted into space after impact.

The DART team believes that the recoil from the plume “substantially enhanced” the spacecraft’s push against the asteroid, not unlike the release of air from a balloon propels it in the opposite direction, according to NASA.

The LICIACube captured an image showing plumes of material streaming from Dimorphos asteroid after impact. The rectangles were added to enhance contrast and showcase the plumes. ASI/NASA/APL

“Although we have done more to the system than simply change the orbit, we may have left Dimorphos wobbling a bit,” said Tom Statler, DART program scientist at NASA. “So over time, there may be some interaction between the wobble and the orbit and things will adjust. But it’s certainly never going to go back to the old 11 hour 55 minute orbit.”

Astronomers are still investigating the surface of Dimorphos and how weak or strong it is. The DART team’s first look at Dimorphos, provided by DART before the crash, suggests that the asteroid is a pile of rubble held together by gravity.

Imagery continues to return from the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, the mini satellite provided by the Italian Space Agency that tagged along as a robotic photojournalist on DART’s mission.

In about four years, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will also fly by the double-asteroid system to study the crater left by the collision and measure the mass of Dimorphos.

“DART has given us some fascinating data about both asteroid properties and the effectiveness of a kinetic impactor as a planetary defense technology,” said Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “The DART team is continuing to work on this rich dataset to fully understand this first planetary defense test of asteroid deflection.”

The research team chose Dimorphos for this mission because its size is comparable to asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. An asteroid the size of Dimorphos could cause “regional devastation” if it hit Earth.

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with an orbit that places them within 30 million miles (48.3 million kilometers) from Earth. Detecting the threat of near-Earth objects that could cause grave harm is a primary focus of NASA and other space organizations around the world.

No asteroids are currently on a direct impact course with Earth, but more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids exist in all shapes and sizes.

Finding populations of hazardous asteroids and determining their sizes are priorities of NASA and its international partners. The design for a space-based telescope called the Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission is currently in review.

“We should not be too eager to say that one test on one asteroid tells us exactly how every other asteroid would behave in a similar situation,” Statler said. “But what we can do is use this test as an anchor point for our physics calculations in our simulations that tell us how different kinds of impacts in different situations should behave.”

NASA spacecraft will intentionally crash into asteroid | CNN

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A NASA spacecraft that will deliberately crash into an asteroid is getting closer to its target.

The DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, will have a rendezvous with the space rock on September 26 after launching 10 months ago.

The spacecraft will slam into an asteroid’s moon to see how it affects the motion of an asteroid in space. A live stream of images captured by the spacecraft will be available on NASA’s website beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET that day. The impact is expected to occur around 7:14 p.m. ET.

The mission is heading for Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Didymos. The asteroid system poses no threat to Earth, NASA officials have said, making it a perfect target to test out a kinetic impact – which may be needed if an asteroid is ever on track to hit Earth.

The event will be the agency’s first full-scale demonstration of deflection technology that can protect the planet.

“For the first time ever, we will measurably change the orbit of a celestial body in the universe,” said Robert Braun, head of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory’s Space Exploration Sector.

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that place them within 30 million miles (48.3 million kilometers) of Earth. Detecting the threat of near-Earth objects, or NEOs, that could cause grave harm is a primary focus of NASA and other space organizations around the world.

Collision course

Astronomers discovered Didymos more than two decades ago. It means “twin” in Greek, a nod to how the asteroid forms a binary system with the smaller asteroid, or moon. Didymos is nearly half a mile (0.8 kilometer) across.

Meanwhile, Dimorphos is 525 feet (160 meters) in diameter, and its name means “two forms.”

The spacecraft recently caught its first glimpse of Didymos using an instrument called the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation, or DRACO. It was about 20 million miles (32 million kilometers) away from the binary asteroid system when it took images in July.

On the day of impact, images taken by DRACO will not only reveal our first look at Dimorphos, but the spacecraft will use them to autonomously guide itself for an encounter with the tiny moon.

During the event, these images will stream back to Earth at a rate of one per second, providing a “pretty stunning” look at the moon, said Nancy Chabot, planetary scientist and DART coordination lead at the Applied Physics Laboratory.

At the time of impact, Didymos and Dimorphos will be relatively close to Earth – within 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers).

The spacecraft will accelerate at about 15,000 miles per hour (24,140 kilometers per hour) when it collides with Dimorphos.

The light from asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos is visible in a composite of 243 images taken by DRACO on July 27. NASA JPL DART Navigation Team

It aims to crash into Dimorphos to change the asteroid’s motion in space, according to NASA. This collision will be recorded by LICIACube, or Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, a companion cube satellite provided by the Italian Space Agency.

The briefcase-size CubeSat hitched a ride with DART into space. It recently deployed from the spacecraft and is traveling behind it to record what happens.

Three minutes after impact, the CubeSat will fly by Dimorphos to capture images and video. The video, while not immediately available, will be streamed back to Earth in the weeks and months following the collision.

Protecting the planet

Dimorphos was chosen for this mission because its size is relative to asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth. The spacecraft is about 100 times smaller than Dimorphos, so it won’t obliterate the asteroid.

The fast impact will only change Dimorphos’ speed as it orbits Didymos by 1%, which doesn’t sound like a lot – but it will change the moon’s orbital period.

An illustration shows NASA's DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency's LICIACube before the collision with Dimorphos. Steve Gribben/Johns Hopkins APL/NASA

“Sometimes we describe it as running a golf cart into a great pyramid or something like that,” Chabot said. “But for Dimorphos, this really is about asteroid deflection, not disruption. This isn’t going to blow up the asteroid; it isn’t going to put it into lots of pieces.”

The nudge will shift Dimorphos slightly and make it more gravitationally bound to Didymos – so the collision won’t change the binary system’s path around the Earth or increase its chances of becoming a threat to our planet, Chabot said.

Dimorphos completes an orbit around Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. After the impact, that may change to 11 hours and 45 minutes, but follow-up observations will determine how much of a shift occurred.

Astronomers will use ground-based telescopes to observe the binary asteroid system and see how much the orbital period of Dimorphos changed, which will determine if DART was successful.

Space-based telescopes such as Hubble, Webb and NASA’s Lucy mission will also observe the event.

In four years, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will arrive to study Dimorphos, measuring physical properties of the moon, and look at the DART impact and the moon’s orbit.

No asteroids are currently on a direct impact course with Earth, but more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids exist in all shapes and sizes.

The valuable data collected by DART and Hera will contribute to planetary defense strategies, especially the understanding of what kind of force can shift the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid that could collide with our planet.

James Webb Space Telescope reveals birth of a star in a cosmic ...

Astronomers estimate 50 000 sources of near-infrared light are represented in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Their light has travelled through various distances to reach the telescope's detectors, representing the vastness of space in a single image. A foreground star in our own galaxy, to the right of the image centre, displays Webb's distinctive diffraction spikes. Bright white sources surrounded by a hazy glow are the galaxies of Pandora's Cluster, a conglomeration of already-massive clusters of galaxies coming together to form a mega cluster. The concentration of mass is so great that the fabric of spacetime is warped by gravity, creating a natural, super-magnifying glass called a 'gravitational lens' that astronomers can use to see very distant sources of light beyond the cluster that would otherwise be undetectable, even to Webb. These lensed sources appear red in the image, and often as elongated arcs distorted by the gravitational lens. Many of these are galaxies from the early universe, with their contents magnified and stretched out for astronomers to study. Other red sources in the image have yet to be confirmed by follow-up observations with Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument to determine their true nature. One intriguing example is an extremely compact source that appears as a tiny red dot, despite the magnifying effect of the gravitational lens. One possibility is that the dot is a supermassive black hole in the early universe. NIRSpec data will provide both distance measurements and compositional details of selected sources, providing a wealth of previously-inaccessible information about the universe and how it has evolved over time. [Image Description: A crowded galaxy field on a black background, with one large star dominating the image just right of center. Three areas are concentrated with larger white hazy blobs on the left, lower right, and upper right above the single star.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

NASA is using the same space suits astronauts wore 30 years ago ...

When astronauts Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson conducted the space shuttle program’s first spacewalk in 1983, they probably wouldn’t have imagined their spacesuits would still be in use on the International Space Station some 36 years later.

Not only are they still in use but the suits, intended to last 15 years, are currently the only ones available for astronauts whizzing around Earth at thousands of miles per hour.

Now, as NASA prepares to head back to the moon, the agency must scramble to develop a next-generation suit or the next American astronauts will be forced to don some hand-me-down, 1980s equipment.

Sure, the suits get updated after six years in orbit or 25 spacewalks, but with outdated technology and only a limited quantity available, the fact of the matter is the nearly 40-year-old suits NASA employs will not serve the needs of future moonwalkers.

The current spacesuits are expected to last until 2028 – four years after NASA hopes to land astronauts on the moon again. But a series of incidents and issues from the spacesuits suggests the need for change is more urgent. A recent example is the all-female spacewalk cancellation in March, which instead had a male and female astronaut perform the walk.

NASA has known for a while that it needs to update its spacesuits. The agency's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel reiterated the urgency to develop the next-generation suit during a meeting last month.

In 2017, a similar report by NASA's inspector general came to the same conclusion and stated "the agency remains years away from having a flight-ready spacesuit capable of replacing the EMU or suitable for use on future exploration missions."

EMUs, or Extravehicular Mobility Units, are the current suits used on the ISS.

Considered to be a “mini spacecraft” in itself, the spacesuit astronauts currently wear to survive the harsh environment of space is complex and requires major modifications based on the user.

"The EMU, of course, is very bulky. It's a big, bulky, awkward suit to work in," former NASA astronaut Winston Scott told FLORIDA TODAY. "But your life depends on it. It is a totally self-contained life support system."

Since the retirement of the shuttle program in 2011, "NASA has had limited ability to return the EMUs from the ISS because only one of the commercial vehicles that ferry supplies to the station has the capability to return items to Earth," according to the inspector general's report.

"As a result, astronauts are using the EMUs for much longer periods of time between maintenance and refurbishment than originally intended," the report reads.

And only 11 of the 18 "EMU Primary Life Support System units," backpack-like structures required to keep astronauts alive when conducting spacewalks, are still in use. Five were destroyed in the Challenger and Columbia disasters as well as the SpaceX cargo mission that broke apart in 2015. Another was lost during ground testing and the last was built for certification only and is not suitable for flight.

NASA has had years to develop a next-generation spacesuit, but a "lack of a formal plan and specific destinations for future missions has complicated spacesuit development," the report noted.

Starting in 2005 with the establishment of the Constellation program, which called for the development of a suite of vehicles to take astronauts back to the moon and beyond, NASA has spent almost $200 million on three spacesuit development efforts.

On May 1, NASA said on Twitter there would be a "transition suit" for the first mission to return to the moon that would include modern designs for astronauts to explore the lunar surface. As to what those advancements will be or what the transition suit will entail, the agency is still unsure.

"We’re looking at internal and external options for a transition spacesuit for the Moon 2024 landing with American astronauts as well as options for modern spacesuits for sustainable surface missions," NASA spokeswoman Cheryl Warner said.

Possible future spacesuits

On the local front, Florida Institute of Technology academics have their own ideas on how to upgrade NASA's spacesuits.

In 2016, Ondrej Doule, director and founder of the university's Human Spaceflight Laboratory, along with students and team members, won the grand prize for their design of the interior of a single-person spacecraft in the Genesis Engineering Solutions competition.

The "Wholly Human Integrated Single Person Spacecraft" could replace the current spacesuits, Doule said. Instead of modeling the single-person spacecraft to look like a suit, the device would essentially become a mini-spacecraft with robotic arms and would have enough room for one astronaut.

Not only could any astronaut perform spacewalks regardless of their body shape, the walks would also be safer to perform because the robotic arms, operated by the astronauts, would do all the repairs needed outside of the space station instead of actual people, Doule said.

Though NASA does not know what the next spacesuit will look like, the agency is casting a wide net in its search.

As part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, the agency is funding 18 studies, one of which includes the development of a "SmartSuit," an intelligent suit designed with self-healing skin and data collection for spacewalks in extreme environments, NASA said last month.

The SmartSuit could be used to travel to other celestial bodies like the moon and Mars, and will incorporate "soft-robotics technology that allows astronauts to be highly mobile and better interact with their surroundings," according to the release.

The $125,000 project, however, is only in the first phase and can only receive additional funding after successful studies and a transition to the second phase.

Scott, who conducted three spacewalks in NASA's current spacesuit, has his own wishes for how future suits should operate.

"An ideal spacesuit would be one that you don't even think about while you're wearing it," Scott said. "So that means the suit would be light. It would fit you, it wouldn't be big and bulky."

Instead of inhibiting movement, vision or restricting the astronaut in any way, Scott hopes for a much lighter, tighter-fit suit that still protects the astronaut. He also wouldn't mind an "Iron Man" version of a spacesuit.

"Perhaps the suit will be smaller and lighter than what we have, but maybe with some human assist functions like some robotics inside the suit to help you move," Scott said. "Like the suits we develop for our military, the super soldier suits. Like the real version of Iron Man."

Current suits won't work for deep space missions

With the race back on to send humans to the moon again by 2024, why won't the current spacesuits work if they've already been approved to last until 2028?

According to the inspector general's report, spacesuit requirements vary for each mission. A spacesuit designed for the moon has different needs than one for Mars since "each destination has different temperatures, radiation levels, pressures, mobility requirements, and exposure to dust and debris."

Though the current spacesuits are sufficient for use aboard the space station, it won't suffice for deep space exploration missions.

"For example, the current EMU lacks the hip and flexibility needed to walk on and explore planetary surfaces," the report reads.

Typically, spacesuits are designed with the mission in mind.

Custom-fit suits were made specifically for astronauts of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. But with the shuttle program, NASA took a different approach.

As the astronaut class grew larger, it became too expensive to custom-tailor each suit to each astronaut. Instead, NASA’s current suits are a combination of several detachable parts that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

This allows multiple astronauts to wear the same suit, something the agency has done since the 1980s. But that's not to say they haven't come with their own sets of issues.

Past incidents and current issues

In March, NASA was planning the first all-female spacewalk with astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch. But a lack of readily available spacesuits aboard the space station prevented a historic event from occurring.

With limited sizes available, sometimes astronauts — usually females — cannot perform spacewalks due to sizing issues with available spacesuits, NASA design engineer Elizabeth Benson said in a 2009 paper named "Complexity of Sizing for Space Suit Applications."

This was essentially the problem with the planned all-female spacewalk – both McClain and Koch required mediums, but there was only one on board that would be ready in time, NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said. The spacewalk did happen, just not with two female astronauts. Instead, NASA astronaut Nick Hague took over McClain's spot and accompanied Koch on the walk.

A simple solution would have been making more sizes available, but due to high costs, NASA had to downgrade the options to only medium, large and extra large sizes, preventing smaller astronauts from wearing the suits and conducting spacewalks.

And if limited sizing and quantity weren't already issues, according to NASA, a spacesuit weighs approximately 280 pounds on the ground. In space, it may not weigh anything, but that still doesn't mean astronauts aren't carrying around all that mass, Scott said.

"Its bulk makes it difficult to work in and some of the smaller stature people or some of the weaker physical people can't manipulate the suit," Scott said. "And of course, they may or may not be able to conduct a spacewalk."

Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to perform a spacewalk in 1985, had her own issues with the suit. In an interview with Outside Magazine in April, Sullivan explained how the suit never fit her correctly.

"The suit's knee was a bit above mine," she told the magazine. "Every time I needed to bend, I wasn't bending a natural joint."

Astronaut Linda Godwin also told the magazine the shoulders of the spacesuit were the biggest issue.

The suits were initially designed to fit a wide variety of both women and men, but that changed after the agency cut back in sizes.

Astronaut Peggy Whitson, who holds the American record for time spent in space, said in a documentary interview: "As a woman, doing spacewalks is more challenging, mostly because the suits are sized bigger than the average female."

So why is this a big deal?

As men and women of different shapes and sizes join NASA's astronaut corps, a poorly fitted suit not only prevents certain astronauts from conducting spacewalks, but "can also increase the effort that a wearer must exert to move in the suit, since their joints are not lined up with the suit joints," Benson said.

"Also, a poorly fit suit has the potential to actually impinge on the wearer during motion and lead to a reduction in mobility and risk of injury," she said.

In space, astronauts are essentially floating within their pressurized spacesuit, Scott said. Because the suit is pressurized, which basically means the suit is inflated like a balloon, a common problem astronauts find when wearing the suit is the ability to bend their joints.

"Imagine you're trying to reach for a tool in space and you're reaching to wrap your fingers around the tool. When you try to close and open your fingers, your suit is working against you because it's pressurized," Scott said.

In fact, since they were designed in the 1970s, there have been more than 3,400 anomalies with the current spacesuits, according to the inspector general's report. They range from a loose boot thread to glove damage, uncomfortable body temperatures and helmet water intrusions.

Such was the case in 2013 when European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano reported water, a little over a third of a gallon, in his helmet while conducting a spacewalk. A similar instance occurred again in 2016 with NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra. Both spacewalks were terminated early.

None of the incidents that occurred during spacewalks have resulted in deaths or serious injuries, and only five were terminated early. But that's not to say a new spacesuit isn't necessary for future space exploration.

"As we go forward in space, we need to figure out ways to build suits that provide the protection that you need," Scott said. "But also that are lighter and more flexible and better able to allow a person to work in them."

Contact Jaramillo at 321-242-3668 or antoniaj@floridatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @AntoniaJ_11.

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MORE: Read the latest stories from space team reporter Antonia Jaramillo

What would have happened in the Space Race if the Soviets landed ...

It starts out the same.

The voiceover from President John F. Kennedy comes on saying, "I believe that this nation should commit itself to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

All over the world, anxious faces await this historic milestone. With eyes glued to their television screens, everyone holds their breaths as they get ready to watch the first men land on the moon. In mission control in Houston, workers stand alert as footage from the lunar surface comes alive on their screens.

Yet something's different. The faces of the American men and women watching aren't filled with hope or excitement. Instead, their faces show anger, disappointment, fear and perhaps most notably, regret.

The year is 1969. But instead of the U.S. becoming the first nation to land on the moon, it's the Soviet Union. That's the alternate reality depicted in Apple TV Plus's new show, "For All Mankind," set to release Nov.1.

Though it didn't actually happen, that first-man-on-the-moon glory went to the United States, propelled in large part by work done here on the Space Coast, it's curious to imagine another reality. A reality where the Soviets were the first to land on the celestial body next door to us.

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Apple's new show offers up one possibility: Instead of giving up on the space race, the show depicts a version where the U.S. decides to achieve an even heftier goal. In Apple's telling, NASA seems to immediately set its sights on Mars and other parts of the solar system.

"When (Ron Moore, the creator and writer for the TV series) told me about the idea that we were going to have this alternate reality where the Russians get to the moon first and they beat us ... and what would have happened differently in the world and when he told me that, my eyes lit up and I said, 'Oh my goodness, that is a great idea for a TV show. I love it,'" former NASA astronaut and director of space operations at SpaceX who served as a technical advisor for the show, Garrett Reisman told FLORIDA TODAY.

This alternate depiction resembles what NASA is doing in real life under the new program, Artemis that aims to send the first woman and next man back to the moon by 2024. The current plan is this: Head back to the moon, specifically the south pole, to use its resources – namely the water ice found there to produce rocket fuel, which will help propel future spacecraft to venture farther into the solar system.

The show also incorporates a female character aspiring to be an astronaut, so female astronauts walking on the moon isn't completely ruled out either.

Unlike the current agency, however, the NASA in the TV series seems to be fueled with a competitive vengeance to get back at the Soviets and prove to the rest of the world that the U.S. can still be the leaders in space.

How realistic is it?

But could that have actually happened after having lost so dramatically and during such a turbulent time in history?

Space policy expert at American University, Howard McCurdy doesn't believe so.

"All the magazines in 1947 and again in 1952 reported the following message: The nation that's first in space will win the Cold War," McCurdy said. "In essence, what the quotation was, is the nation that wins the space race will control the Earth."

At the 46th Space Congress in Cape Canaveral held this past June, NASA's deputy administrator James Morhard reiterated that same message. He said whoever gets anywhere in space first, becomes the leader in space and in our world. He was talking about the first people to set foot on Mars.

Thus, had the Soviets been first to land humans on the moon, they would have been the leaders in outer space – eliminating the option for the U.S. to venture farther afield, according to McCurdy.

"If the initial purpose is to demonstrate to uncommitted nations that the United States is first and we're clearly not first, why spend the money to be second when you could reinvest that money in missile defense or in reconnaissance satellites, or in gamma-ray detectors that would confirm whether or not a nation was cheating on the atmospheric tests and atomic weapons and all the other aspects of the Cold War," McCurdy said.

Furthermore, he adds there wouldn't have been the support from the public or funding needed from Congress to do so.

"What it says is beginning in the late 1960s, people would've begun to doubt the technical capabilities of the United States," McCurdy said.

Former NASA historian Roger Launius also doesn't believe the U.S. would have succeeded in trying to send humans on other deep space missions if we'd lost the race to the moon.

"If you publicly announce that you lost the moon race and that your technology was not up to snuff and your economy was not sufficient to support it and all that other stuff that goes along with an admission of failure, why would you turn around and say, 'Oh no, we're not going to do that. We're now going to do something that's at least an order of magnitude more difficult," Launius said.

"You're setting yourself up for failure a second time."

Reisman, on the other hand, disagrees.

"I think it's certainly possible," he said. "I think in some ways, the fact that we were kind of stuck in low Earth orbit for all that time (after the Apollo program ended) and hadn't really advanced any further in space was a bit of a letdown for a lot of people and I think this show kind of addresses that."

Other possibilities to losing space race

Had the Soviets been first to land humans on the moon, both McCurdy and Launius instead believe the U.S. would have proposed a joint venture between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

"It probably would have been more likely that there would have been a deal cut by the Americans and the Russians to go to the moon," Launius said.

But McCurdy does not believe that would have worked.

"I think that's what the United States response would have been and the Soviet response would have been what it was in 1961, 'You've got to be kidding me. You're making this proposal because you're behind, not because you're ahead,"' he said.

"They wouldn't have done it. They would have gone ahead and landed on the moon and try to reap the international benefits of that accomplishment through the 1970s and through the 1980s."

Another possibility could have been to send robotic spacecraft on deep-space missions, like many of the current NASA science missions, instead of sending humans to explore the universe.

"There probably would have been political support for a more modest robotic scientifically-emphasized space program, but it wouldn't have worked because it doesn't capture the imagination of world leaders who are neutral in the Cold War," McCurdy said.

After all, the space race and the Cold War were linked.

Purpose of the space race

After World War II, a new tension began between the world's two greatest superpowers – the democratic U.S. and the communist Soviet Union. The Cold War pushed both nations to compete for first place in technological superiority – best showcased through the "space race."

"This was war by another means," Launius said.

The U.S.'s greatest weapon to combat this war? The Apollo program.

"The Apollo mission was designed as a Cold War version of a hot war," McCurdy said. "Instead of going to war, we went out on the jousting fields like medieval knights and demonstrated our technological prowess."

The whole purpose of the space race was essentially to win the Cold War without the need to actually go to war. It was a figurative death struggle between these two superpowers trying to bring in undecided countries to rally behind them.

"If you want your economic and political system to be the master, you want to persuade these other countries to go along with you," Launius said. "That's what it's about. Because science and technology are going to determine the future and this is a demonstration of science and technology of the most profound type."

McCurdy reiterates the same message.

"The purpose of the space race was not science. It wasn't even to land on the moon," he said. "It was to demonstrate the technologies that were being developed and hopefully never used in the Cold War."

McCurdy speculates that if the Soviets had been first to land on the moon, they probably would have also won the Cold War as a result.

"One of the reasons we won the Cold War is because we won the space race," he said.

"Science and technology determine the future ... and who controls that science and technology, is going to be the dominant force in shaping that," Launius said.

So what would the world be like if the Soviets had won the space race and consequently, the Cold War?

How world would be different

When Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot on the moon, they left behind a plaque that read, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."

Would the cosmonauts have done the same? After all, the U.S. was a free and democratic country, while the Soviet Union was not.

Even the Apollo 11 mission patch displayed how this was an accomplishment to be shared by all humankind, not just America. Though it had the bald eagle, the United States' national bird, included in the patch, both the Apollo 11 and 13 mission patch are the only Apollo patches to not show any space hardware, have the names of the crew or display the American flag – proof that this was a feat to be shared globally.

But how would the world be if the Soviets had landed on the moon instead?

"If (the U.S.) loses the Cold War, then I can piece together a series of events that allows the Soviet Union to be much more intact and much more powerful than it turned out to be when they lost the race to the moon," McCurdy said. "That's what it leads to. The Soviet Union still being the Soviet Union."

The fall of the Berlin Wall probably wouldn't have occurred, the Soviet Union would still have a pretty firm grasp on most of Eastern Europe and many undecided countries at the time could have gone over and allied with the Soviets instead of the Americans, McCurdy and Launius speculated.

"Anything's possible," Launius said. "The reality was, there were so many deficiencies in the Soviet system; the command economy didn't work as well as it should have; the totalitarian nature of things created all kinds of difficulties and those could have played out regardless of who was the first nation on the moon."

"The economy of the Soviet Union was much inferior to the United States and ultimately, that's what did them in in the 1980s," he said.

A new space race?

The reason the U.S. was able to send humans to the moon in the first place was because of the fear fueled by the space race and consequently, the Cold War. The fear that the Soviets would get there first.

Today, such fear doesn't exist.

"This was a life and death warfare type struggle and we've not had that situation since, so nobody's been willing to spend the kind of dollars on it that it requires," Launius said.

With the plan to head back to the moon in five years and then eventually on to Mars, not having the necessary funding won't help NASA get anywhere anytime soon.

"NASA now is kind of in a bind," Reisman said. "They want to do this very ambitious program and they want to do it the traditional way, by relying on government programs like (the Space Launch System rocket that would send astronauts to the moon), which are very expensive. So NASA is in a bit of a quandary because I don't think they're going to get the money to do Artemis and put Americans on the moon by 2024 the way they want to do it."

McCurdy argues there is a second space race heating up with China, this time to be the first to send crewed missions to Mars.

But Launius disagrees.

"The situations are so different," Launius said. "I've heard people asking those questions about China all the time. None of us care whether or not China sends a taikonaut to land on the moon or even Mars. We do not fear them like we feared the Soviet Union."

During the Apollo program, 39% of Americans believed the U.S. should do everything they can to be the first nation on the moon, according to a 1965 Gallop poll. Now, only 8% of Americans, according to a poll commissioned by C-SPAN for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing believe a crewed moon mission should be a top priority for NASA. The figure jumps to 18% for a crewed mission to Mars.

After all, this isn't the first time since the Apollo program that NASA has repeated its wish to head back to our nearby satellite and finally meet our red neighbor.

"We've been down this road at least three times and we've not done any of those things," Launius said. "So yeah, I'm skeptical."

Contact Jaramillo at 321-242-3668 or antoniaj@floridatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @AntoniaJ_11.

NASA mission to reveal first look at asteroid, then slam into it | CNN

A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN —

Get ready to see an asteroid’s tiny moon for the first time. Then, watch as a spacecraft deliberately crashes into it.

This scenario sounds like a sci-fi plot, but the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test, happening Monday, is a real-life mission. It aims to be humanity’s first attempt at deflecting an asteroid – without blowing it up, “Armageddon” style.

The spacecraft won’t obliterate Dimorphos, the moon orbiting the asteroid Didymos, but it’s large enough to leave an impact crater. If all goes well, DART will slightly change the motion of a celestial body in space in a stunning first.

The mission results could shape the way humans respond to any future space rocks with the potential to collide with the planet. Despite this extraordinary event taking place 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) away from Earth, we’ll get to see it play out in real time.

Defying gravity

An illustration shows the DART spacecraft and LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos system. Steve Gribben/Johns Hopkins APL/NASA

Monday’s encounter will reveal Dimorphos in striking detail.

In the last hour before impact, expected to occur at 7:14 p.m. ET, DART’s camera will send back images at a rate of one per second, providing a live stream of its approach. Pinpricks of light will slowly come into focus as Didymos and Dimorphos take shape.

The surface of Dimorphos will get sharper and sharper. And when DART slams into the moon at 13,421 miles per hour (21,600 kilometers per hour), our view will disappear.

Wish you could see the collision from another perspective? The Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube will act as DART’s photojournalist, following behind the spacecraft and capturing images and video that will show the whole story.

Dino-mite!

Fossil eggs are providing insight into what life was like for dinosaurs before a massive asteroid strike wiped them out.

Researchers studied more than 1,000 fossilized dinosaur eggs recovered from the Shanyang basin in central China. The eggs came from only two groups, the toothless oviraptors and duck-billed hadrosaurs, suggesting low biodiversity.

It’s possible that dinosaur species were already struggling to survive about 66 million years ago as their diversity waned.

Other researchers still think the asteroid strike was the true driver of dinosaur extinction, not to mention a series of massive volcanic eruptions – and they suggest that if those cataclysmic events hadn’t happened, dinosaurs might still rule the planet.

Curiosities

Arctic wolves at Harbin Polarland are shown in Harbin, China, on November 22, 2017. Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

Researchers in China have cloned a wild Arctic wolf. Sinogene Biotechnology unveiled the female wolf pup, named Maya, on Monday – and the Beijing-based company is hoping this method could save other species.

Wildlife conservationists consider the Arctic wolf, like the ones at Harbin Polarland in Harbin, China, pictured above, at low risk of extinction, but the climate crisis and human encroachment could change that.

To create Maya, scientists applied the same technique used in 1996 that led to Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. The wolf pup was born from a surrogate beagle mother.

But some experts warn about the health and ethical concerns of controversial conservation efforts like cloning.

Across the universe

The James Webb Space Telescope’s new image of Neptune has showcased the most distant planet in our solar system and its hard-to-detect rings in a fresh light.

Webb also focused its instruments on the blinding light of Mars, one of the brightest objects in our night sky.

And don’t count out NASA’s InSight mission just yet. Despite gloomy predictions that the stationary lander would already have fallen silent on Mars, InSight is still operating. Listen to the sounds of space rocks crashing into Mars, as recorded by the lander.

Wild kingdom

Our senses create order out of the world, help us survive and reveal some of the natural beauty that surrounds us. kev303/iStockphoto/Getty Images

Ever wondered what it might be like to experience the world as an animal?

Dogs socialize via scent, and eels discern their environment through electricity. Bats use echolocation to navigate.

All creatures live in their own “sensory bubble” called the umwelt, a species-specific reality that is crucial to their survival, according to award-winning science journalist Ed Yong.

You won’t want to miss this week’s episode of Chasing Life, a podcast hosted by CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. He and Yong take you on a journey through the mysterious senses that exist in the animal kingdom.

And can you guess how many ants live on Earth? Scientists shared a new estimate this week, and it boggles the mind.

Take note

Don’t miss these highlights:

– The Artemis I mega moon rocket met all of its objectives during a crucial fueling test despite some leaks. But the rocket won’t launch Tuesday as planned due to concerns over Tropical Storm Ian.

– Cue the pumpkin spice and everything nice: Fall is finally here for those who live in the Northern Hemisphere. Drought might have an impact on the foliage colors, depending on where you live.

– Astronomers have uncovered more about the origin of a fast radio burst in space, along with new mysteries.

And keep an eye on the night sky because Jupiter will make its closest approach to Earth in 59 years on Monday, appearing bigger and brighter.

Fridge-sized asteroid hit Earth two hours after it was discovered

An asteroid around the size of a refrigerator was spotted hours before it hit Earth's atmosphere, and while it wasn't dangerous, it marked the fifth time in history an asteroid was detected right before hitting our planet.

On March 11, astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky noticed an asteroid at the Piszkéstető Observatory in Hungary. Sarneczky reported it to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which confirmed it was the first time the asteroid had been observed.

NASA's "Scout" system, which constantly searches the Minor Planet Center's database for any potential impacts, then calculated the asteroid's orbit, finding that the asteroid would certainly hit Earth. The system then notified the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and other asteroid impact systems.

Luckily for Earth, the asteroid, named 2022 EB5, was around 6½-feet-long, a size "too small to pose a hazard to Earth," NASA said in a statement.

"Scout" determined the asteroid would enter Earth's atmosphere around Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island roughly 300 miles northeast of Iceland. At 5:23 p.m. EDT, two hours after the asteroid was first spotted by Sarneczky, the asteroid hit Earth's atmosphere just as "Scout" predicted.

It was the fifth time an asteroid was spotted hours before it hit Earth and the first time it's happened since 2019.

"Scout had only 14 observations over 40 minutes from one observatory to work with when it first identified the object as an impactor. We were able to determine the possible impact locations, which initially extended from western Greenland to off the coast of Norway," said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer who developed Scout. "As more observatories tracked the asteroid, our calculations of its trajectory and impact location became more precise."

The International Meteor Organization said no meteorites from the asteroid have been recovered, but some people in Iceland reported seeing bright flashes, indicating the space rock became a fireball.

Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, said asteroids like 2022 EB5 enter Earth's atmosphere around every 10 months, but it's hard to spot one before it's already entered the atmosphere.

"Very few of these asteroids have actually been detected in space and observed extensively prior to impact, basically because they are very faint until the last few hours, and a survey telescope has to observe just the right spot of sky at the right time for one to be detected," Chodas said.

Close call: 230-foot wide asteroid initially expected to hit Earth in 2023 was false alarm

Asteroid and dinosaurs: New research says asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit Earth in the spring

While this asteroid snuck up on astronomers, there is no need to worry about a bigger, catastrophic asteroid doing the same. NASA said larger asteroids are easier to spot and can be found far in advance. The agency noted this asteroid showed their systems can be highly accurate in projecting an object's likely impact location and would help planetary defense systems to be fully prepared.

NASA is testing its planetary defense systems should a dangerous asteroid ever threatens to hit Earth.

NASA launched the DART system in November, which will hit the asteroid moon of Didymos in September, with the goal of determining whether crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid could change its course.

Follow Jordan Mendoza on Twitter: @jordan_mendoza5.

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Opinion: Why I'm a space environmentalist -- and why you should be ...

Editor’s Note: Astrodynamicist Moriba Jah is an associate professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, and co-founder and chief scientist of Privateer, a space data intelligence company. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN —

There are currently over 27,000 pieces of human-made objects being tracked as they orbit Earth, but that only includes objects larger than a softball. If you consider all debris, that number is estimated to be closer to 100 million. This can be anything from dead satellites still in orbit to pieces of metal, screws or flecks of paint.

But what does that mean for us?

Thanks to space exploration, and our history of putting objects into space, we know more about ourselves, our planet and our universe. Our lives today depend on what’s in space: communications systems, weather forecasting, financial transactions and even the location and navigation functions on your cell phone rely on satellites. Many of the innovations we have come to love, like memory foam mattresses and LASIK eye surgery, came about because of our celestial exploration.

Until now, space has been seen as a free-for-all – the next frontier to explore. But what we forget is that it’s also an ecosystem – and like any ecosystem, exploration of it has come at an environmental cost. Even the tiniest speck of debris, orbiting at around 15,700 miles per hour, can damage satellites and disrupt the services that have become essential to our daily lives. Even worse, large pieces of debris can fall from the sky and crash on Earth. In July, remnants of a Chinese rocket returned from orbit and landed in the Indian Ocean. While we are fortunate that it didn’t cause further damage, we may not be so lucky next time. There’s an appreciable chance that someone will be killed by space debris this decade.

Becoming a space environmentalist

I’ve always felt a sense of stewardship toward this place we know as our home, Earth. That feeling came to fruition most intensely while on a trip to Alaska in 2015, when I saw the way certain indigenous groups live in harmony with our planet despite the terrible environmental and societal damage caused by colonization. I thought: ‘We, as humanity, will not survive if we do not embrace stewardship over ownership.’

Ownership asks us to make claims to rights, whereas stewardship asks us to make claims to responsibilities. The effect on the environment, and our ability to use it harmoniously and sustainably, is determined by whether we adopt an ethos of ownership or of stewardship.

The number of satellites in space doubled in the last two years. NASA

As an astrodynamicist, who studies the motion of natural and human-made bodies in space, I knew space was a neglected ecosystem that needed to be protected. If this next frontier is full of junk, we won’t be able to fully explore or tap into the innovations that space can provide. That will jeopardize our ability to reliably know more about ourselves and our planet – knowledge that stems uniquely from space-based data.

There is much redundancy in space. Over 4,500 active satellites currently orbit Earth. This number has doubled in the past two years and will continue to grow, but many of them are unnecessary. We often see many different satellites in a common orbital highway that provide the same services. This redundancy stems from an ownership as opposed to a stewardship perspective. As we’ve seen on Earth, a lack of shared resources across borders and sectors has allowed this free-for-all to perpetuate, leading to greater pollution in space and the increasing likelihood of debris falling from the sky. To be sure, competition in and of itself is not a bad thing. However, when competition exists without holistic management of resources and ecosystems, the outcome is detrimental for all – a tragedy of the commons.

Armed with this knowledge, and inspired by indigenous traditions of environmental stewardship, I became – what I like to call – a space environmentalist.

Creating empathy for space

So how do we solve this growing concern of space debris and not repeat the same mistakes we’ve made on Earth? How can you become a space environmentalist too?

The good news is that there are already large-scale solutions in play. Government agencies are beginning to get involved. In July, the White House released its orbital debris implementation plan, outlining 44 specific actions for government agencies to lead. The European Space Agency is launching its first debris removal project in 2025.

Experts say millions of pieces of debris circle Earth. At orbital speeds, an object the size of a paperclip could damage a satellite. Surrey Space Centre

In the private sector, the Space Sustainability Rating (SSR), which went live this summer, provides a data-based rating system to quantify the sustainability of space missions, while offering practical guidance to improve sustainability performance.

For an average citizen, being part of the solution can feel overwhelming – but we all have a role to play. It begins with taking note of what’s happening, spreading awareness and learning more about how interconnected everything actually is. Everyone needs to understand that what we do in one location on Earth influences our oceans, our air and yes, space. And we need to act accordingly.

I co-founded and serve as chief scientist at Privateer, a company which supports these efforts by developing proprietary tools to monitor human-made objects in space. We aim to show people the evidence of this interconnectedness so that they are more reluctant to say, “that’s not my problem,” and we want to guarantee a safe and accessible future for humanity’s space resources.

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Ultimately, space sustainability is more than just tracking satellites and debris accurately. It’s vital that these data are used to support the responsible and harmonious use of space. We must find ways to share space between private companies, government agencies and academia across nations, generations and cultures.

Space is a global commons. It belongs to no one.

At the end of the day, we all need to become space environmentalists.