08/12/2021
The United States. Space Force this week installed a new high-tech radar system that the agency says will be able to "search, track, and discriminate multiple small, baseball-sized objects" in space. The agency was the butt of all jokes when it was established in 2019, but its role has only been expanded since then. It is tasked with protecting American interests in space and providing space capabilities to the military to thwart any attack on the U.S. through that route.
While the Space Force is trying to protect the U.S. from potential attacks through space, NASA is working to keep all earthlings safe from possible asteroid impacts on earth. Towards that end, the agency last month launched a spacecraft with a one-way ticket to crash into an asteroid to test if such a collision can alter the latter's trajectory. Called DART, or Double Asteroid Redirect Test, the experiment will offer researchers insight into whether this strategy will help prevent possible asteroid impacts in case of any actual emergency in the future.
