Out of this world! Hawaii students get a chance to track NASA’s asteroid crash

KAHULUI (HawaiiNewsNow) – A Maui astronomer is involving two brilliant highschool college students to determine how an asteroid’s trajectory was affected by a NASA spacecraft.

The College of Hawaii says the spacecraft that NASA deliberately crashed into an asteroid Monday afternoon was the dimensions of a faculty bus.

College of Hawaii astronomer Dr. J. D. Armstrong is working with a gaggle of excessive schoolers from Maui to trace its aftermath from a telescope atop Haleakala.

“What’s actually cool with these photographs is, you see the tail,” stated Armstrong.

Armstrong stated asteroids don’t sometimes have a tail – comets do. So, he says this discovering is fascinating.

“We don’t crash satellites into asteroids day by day and asteroids don’t hit one another day by day. So sure, it’s fairly uncommon. It’s uncommon that one thing takes off the floor of an asteroid,” Armstrong stated.

Armstrong is working with Maui Excessive Faculty Sophomores Wilson Chau and Holden Suzuki to additionally monitor the asteroid’s orbit.

“After I discovered there was a undertaking like that, that we may very well be part of and we might study, I used to be tremendous excited,” Suzuki stated.

The staff of astronomers say it’s vital to be taught these items in case an asteroid heads to Earth, they know the right way to change its path.

“With this process, I feel it’s positively a revolution to what science has gotten to,” stated Chau.

For these 16-year-olds, they’re hoping to make use of their data and abilities for a huge impact on their group in the future.

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