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NASA saves the Earth! – In a maintenance window

September 25, 2022 By Andrew

This evening (Monday, September 26, 2022) at 7:14pm EDT, the NASA DART spacecraft will intentionally crash into an asteroid named Dimorphos – hoping to change it’s course, thus saving the Earth from destruction!

Ok, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. You see, Dimorphos is not actually on course to hit the Earth, and even if it did, it’s only about 500 feet in diameter. 500 feet sounds like a lot if it happens to land on your house, but the asteroid that likely caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was more like 8 miles across.

So Dimorphos isn’t going to destroy humanity. But this test could help save us. In both movies and real-life, our best defense against a humanity-destroying asteroid is the idea that we could “shoot it out of the sky”, but no-one has ever tried. Until now.

And that’s why this event is so important. If there’s ever an asteroid headed towards Earth that we really need to divert off course, I don’t want that to be NASA’s first rodeo. I want them to practice. To test the theory and the tools in a safe environment.

In our work in telecoms, that’s why we have test lines, and a lab environment, so we can verify things work before inconveniencing our subscribers. That’s also why we use maintenance windows – not just for upgrades, but also for tests. If we need to try something important, we want to find a situation where the consequences of failure are limited – so we can refine the process, so everything goes perfectly when it matters most.

Hopefully this is the first test of many, as I’m hoping NASA will hit a homerun when it really matters.

You can watch the asteroid impact live on NASA TV, with coverage starting at 6pm EDT.

About Andrew

Award Consulting is focused on helping ILECs and CLECs who use Metaswitch products to thrive as they improve their networks through migrations, strategic projects and improved service offerings.

Our goal is to create highly specific, highly valuable content targeted specifically at US regional service providers, and especially those who are running Metaswitch equipment. Join our email list to be notified of new content.

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Our goal is to create highly specific, highly valuable content targeted specifically at US regional service providers, and especially those who are running Metaswitch equipment. Join our email list to be notified of new content.



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