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Wow, that's the first step! However, the most efficient method would be actually land (I know - maybe even impossible?) on it, and use propellers to change its trajectory. We don't have too much throwaway high-tech to crash it on asteroids...
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Mandatory sharing of Ben Afleck commentary speaking for all of us.
Instead of pointing out that exact measurements finally came in (of long term movement change), journalist instead focused on the obvious outcome that everyone expects and knows
Well done, DART, which country did you aim it to?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's how rockets work.
Yeah, I sort of meant in the context of an object losing its mass, it's seldom used on earth as the effects are small but on the timescale/distance/speeds of an asteroid it could have noticeable effects. Rockets are using mass loss but there's more going on with the rapidly expanding gas causing the increased impulse.
If you think about it that's how a cannon works. The projectile gets pushed forwards and the barrel gets pushed in the opposite direction. Some of the larger ones can push their launcher back quite a bit more than you might expect.
My point is that this is actually a common failure of intuition. We tend to think of larger objects on earth as fixed and in our day to day life on dry land they often are (at least more or less) due to static friction.
A slightly more interesting observation (I think) is that if the bodies don't achieve escape velocity relative to one another then the forces all cancel out in the end. It just might take an arbitrarily long time in the case of similarly sized masses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure this is actually a necessary explanation...but while propellers technically COULD function in space (not a perfect vacuum, right?)...they're basically going to be useless.
He probably misuses "propeller" which is strangely restrictive to "rotative blade propulsion" in English whereas "to propel" is generic in its meaning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He probably misuses "propeller" which is strangely restrictive to "rotative blade propulsion" in English whereas "to propel" is generic in its meaning.
Be careful about how you store those inflammable propellers.
It was in the context of hydrogen and I could have sworn it was flammable. But here is this encyclopedia telling me it's INflammable. It's... not flammable? Looked it up in the school library.
Thank you, that memory came up from the depths of time. Probably haven't thought about that in 30 years. Funny how we sometimes just didn't know stuff, and couldn't find out back then.