Leonardo DiCaprio criticizes Ottawa over B.C. salmon farms
Salmon farms have long been a point of contention between environmentalists and fish farmers in British Columbia, but a much bigger net is now being cast on the topic.
NASA launched a spacecraft Tuesday night on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth.
The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a $330 million project with echoes of the Bruce Willis movie "Armageddon."
If all goes well, in September 2022 it will slam head-on into Dimorphos, an asteroid 525 feet (160 metres) across, at 15,000 mph (24,139 kph).
"This isn't going to destroy the asteroid. It's just going to give it a small nudge," said mission official Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which is managing the project.
Dimorphos orbits a much larger asteroid called Didymos. The pair are no danger to Earth but offer scientists a way to measure the effectiveness of the collision.
Dimorphos completes one orbit of Didymos every 11 hours, 55 minutes. DART's goal is a crash that will slow Dimorphos down and cause it to fall closer toward the bigger asteroid, shaving 10 minutes off its orbit.
The change in the orbital period will be measured by telescopes on Earth. The minimum change for the mission to be considered a success is 73 seconds.
The DART technique could prove useful for altering the course of an asteroid years or decades before it bears down on Earth with the potential for catastrophe.
A small nudge "would add up to a big change in its future position, and then the asteroid and the Earth wouldn't be on a collision course," Chabot said.
Scientists constantly search for asteroids and plot their courses to determine whether they could hit the planet.
"Although there isn't a currently known asteroid that's on an impact course with the Earth, we do know that there is a large population of near-Earth asteroids out there," said Lindley Johnson, planetary defence officer at NASA. "The key to planetary defence is finding them well before they are an impact threat."
DART will take 10 months to reach the asteroid pair. The collision will occur about 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometres) from Earth.
Ten days beforehand, DART will release a tiny observation spacecraft supplied by the Italian space agency that will follow it.
DART will stream video until it is destroyed on impact. Three minutes later, the trailing craft will make images of the impact site and material that is ejected.
Salmon farms have long been a point of contention between environmentalists and fish farmers in British Columbia, but a much bigger net is now being cast on the topic.
Two men from Senegal froze to death were found in the snow of a wooded area close to the Canadian border, New York state police said.
The Vancouver Canucks weren’t the only ones who stumbled during Thursday night’s game against the Dallas Stars.
An historic downtown Toronto bar is closing its doors next week after nearly 200 years in business.
Austin Hunter Turner died in 2017, on a night that his mother has rewound and replayed again and again, trying to make sense of what happened.
Not getting enough sleep may cause you to feel five to 10 years older than you really are, according to two new studies.
Manhattan prosecutors suggested Friday that Donald Trump violated a gag order in his hush-money criminal case this week by assailing the judge's daughter and making a false claim about her on social media.
Niagara Region says it has declared a state of emergency 'out of an abundance of caution' as it prepares for an influx of visitors for next month’s total solar eclipse.
An Ontario man who built a garage on his property has been locked in a battle with his electricity provider for a year and half over a severed power line.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
The spring allergy season has started early in many parts of Canada, with high levels of pollen in some cities already. Experts weigh in on which areas have it worse so far this season.
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
B.C. conservation officers recently seized a nine-foot-long Burmese python from a home in Chilliwack.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
The Ontario government is introducing changes to auto-insurance, but some experts say the move is ill-advised.
Newfoundland’s unique version of the Pine Marten has grown out of its threatened designation.
A Toronto man is out $12,000 after falling victim to a deepfake cryptocurrency scam that appeared to involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.