LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Scott Bellamy’s job is to stare into space and dream of wild possibilities. But this one wasn’t something he thought was possible.
“This was an opportunity to go out and actually do an actual test against an actual asteroid with a spacecraft and demonstrate this is not only feasible but doable,” he said soon after learning he’d receive the prestigious Science Technology and Environmental Medal.
Bellamy and his partner, Brian Key, spent more than seven years leading the “DART” mission for NASA. The goal was to see if they could redirect an asteroid’s path, should one ever flirt with entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
“We were hoping to demonstrate that this asteroid could be shifted off orbit by at least 73 seconds,” he explained.
Soon after their spacecraft collided with the asteroid called Dimorphos, at a rate of more than 13,000 MPH, the asteroid was knocked 30 minutes off course. It's easy to say it was mission accomplished.
“It’s beyond my wildest dreams,” he said of both being honored and the mission's result.
The odds of a devastating asteroid hitting the planet are long, but as Scott noted, we know it’s happened before, yielding some devastating results.
“Right now, there’s not a credible chance of one of them hitting Earth until around 2200, but that’s still a chance that somebody will have to reckon with in the future,” he said.
Thanks to the Powell County native and his partner, those charged with having to reckon with that might now have the tool to keep it from ever entering our atmosphere.
“It was the first practical demonstration of, can we shift the trajectory of an asteroid that could potentially be coming towards Earth,” Bellamy said.
