Neil deGrasse Tyson explains NASA’s asteroid-shifting DART mission

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• Geoff Bennett:

  65 million years after a giant asteroid crashed into Earth and caused one of its greatest mass extinctions, NASA deployed a small spacecraft on a collision course with a much smaller asteroid, just 500 feet across. The double asteroid redirection mission known as DART was a success altering the orbit of a planetary object for the first time ever.

  For more on this we're joined by renowned astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's just written a new book titled "Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization." It's so great to have you here.

• Neil deGrasse Tyson:

  Thanks for having me.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And, you know, there was a Hollywood blockbuster in the 90s called Armageddon about altering an asteroids trajectory and saving mankind. That's what a lot of people think about when they think about what NASA did with this with this DART mission. That of course, was science fiction. This is real life. I mean, how much of a Marvel is this?

• Neil deGrasse Tyson:

  Well, it first of all, we've known about the risks of asteroids and started creating catalogs of those that have us in their targets. We started doing that at least back in the 70s.

  So I'm a little disappointed it's taken this long but better late than never. And the DART mission, they select a little orbiting pair of asteroids. One of them a moonlit, they call it, has a very well understood orbit. And so if you nudge that you get to check to see how much you successfully nudged it later on. And that's exactly what it just happened. And it was a success.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Why was there a preference to nudge the asteroid instead of blowing it up?

• Neil deGrasse Tyson:

  Deflecting an asteroid has always been the wiser, more sensible way to do this. While, yes, we're in modern times we're good at blowing stuff up. Sure. But you're not always good at knowing where the pieces end up after you've done that.

  Whereas if you nudge it out of the way, yes, it's still there. Yes, and it might harm you one day in the future. But if you're good at this, nothing will ever harm you. Because you just continue to deflect them. You can send it off to the left, to the right, you can even speed it up or slow it down. But any of these will successfully, if you calculate it right, prevent yet another extinction, which the dinosaurs suffered.

  And by the way, I'm pretty sure that if the dinosaurs had NASA, they'd still be here, we would have never evolved to anything more ambitious than a rodent running under him trying to avoid being orders for T Rex.

• Geoff Bennett:

  That's a good point. So as I understand it, this small asteroids orbit was shortened by 32 minutes, help us understand the physics that go into a feat like that.

• Neil deGrasse Tyson:

  Yes, so you have the orbit. And if you get put it into a head on collision, what you do is you sort of slow it down, and it falls to a lower orbit, and then at lower orbit, you change the orbital period. And that's what we were able to measure quite precisely.

  I'd like to think that in not too many years, we'll get very good at this, and be able to ensure some level of protection of our species, not just our species, other species of life on Earth. I don't want to be the laughingstock of the galaxy, being the only species with enough resources and intellect to have a space program and not actually invoke it to prevent us from going extinct.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So while we have the I want to ask about your book, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, what did you learn? And what did you hope to impart with this book?

• Neil deGrasse Tyson:

  And what the cosmic perspective does is have you reassess, and rebalance all the things that you were fighting about, fighting other people about. Thinking you your opinion was an unassailable truth, when in fact, maybe there are holes in it. Or maybe there's another place to stand, where you have a more enlightened perspective on what it is you're doing.

  And what a cosmic perspective does is coupled with a dose of science literacy and rational thinking. It changes every way you look at your decisions in life. And my hope is that people acquire the book and read it before Thanksgiving dinner, because that's when all the great arguments occur in the family. And this would totally equipped you to see everything in a new way, and bring peace and harmony, perhaps into what's going on in front of you.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Is that what inspired you to write the book the fraught times in which we live?

• Neil deGrasse Tyson:

  Yes, yes. And in fact, the opening quote, it's a quote from Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14, astronaut, and it begins, you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, and intense dissatisfaction with a state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it.

  From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty, you want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and take them a minute quarter million miles out and say, look at that, you son of a bitch. That's what the book is about.

• Geoff Bennett:

  All right.

• Neil deGrasse Tyson:

  What else to tell you.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Yes, I can't think of a better summary than that.

• Neil deGrasse Tyson:

  Yes.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Neil deGrasse Tyson, it's a real privilege to speak with you. Thanks so much.

• Neil deGrasse Tyson:

  Thanks for having me.