NASA to crash $330M spacecraft into asteroid to see if impact can alter course
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The $330m figure is mentioned in the title and at the top of the article but nowhere else. I'm not sure what purpose it serves except for attracting clicks and trying to provoke a visceral "wow that's a waste of money" response. (I'm sure we'd allot unlimited funds if there actually was an asteroid.)
Regardless, it's an interesting experiment and it will be nice to see results next month (how soon after the September 27 collision will analysis be possible?).
> The best known collision occurred 66 million years ago when a 10 km wide asteroid struck Chicxulub in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The collision created a blast that had the energy of several billion atomic bombs and led to the destruction of 75% of all plant and animals species, including all land-based dinosaurs.
> Since then, films such as Don’t Look Up, Armageddon and Deep Impact have depicted similar devastation being triggered by asteroid or comet crashes in modern times.
Unrelated, I found the above use of "since then" really funny, because it's comparing movies from the past twenty-five years to sixty-six million years ago.
Weird though I know..