Paul: time now for our hits of the year and, kim, first to you. so, paul, my hit goes to the exemplary life and reign of queen elizabeth ii. world lost her this year at age 96 after 70 amazing years on the throne. she was the embodiment of duty, she was a symbol of martial unity even national unity even when her country was going through trying times. she was beloved around the globe. and as politicians look forward to come up with some new year s resolutions, they could do worse than to simply try to mirror some of queen elizabeth s sheer class. we could all use a little bit more of that, may she rest in peace. paul: kyle. i ll give a hit to nasa s dark mission, the double it s ride redirection test, and it s asteroid pro, a spacecraft the size of a refrigerator but moving at 14,000 miles an hour. and the point was to see how much the asteroid s orbit would
Jeff bezos blue origin plans to continue taking passengers for quick ten-minute rides into space. but his new venture is this, a sort of floating business park that will be ready in three to five years. but the coolest mission of 2022, nasa s dart. it will purposely crash into an asteroid s moon at 115,000 miles per hour next fall. the dark mission is to basically go hit an asteroid and see if we can move it. reporter: nasa hopes to use that know-how to deflect future asteroids on a collision course with earth. we have this unique opportunity to demonstrate the method and learn exactly what happens when you crash a spacecraft at high speed into an asteroid. but the u.s. is not alone. china is going big on space.
So one of them comes near enough to earth to do this redirect experiment. otherwise, you waste a lot of energy going so far out in the solar system. yeah, good. this is it. the next one, we ll see what that is. the dark mission. this is what they found. they identified this. and why are you so appreciative of what they found here as a model for this experiment? that s a great question. if you try to deflect a random asteroid. there s so many things that affect the asteroid. soiler heating on one side. you think of the earth and the moon, this is a binary asteroid. there s a big one and a little one. we have the orbital parameters
so this is the asteroid belt. and to it s a region of countless hundreds of thousands of asteroids, each with its own independent orbit around the sun. some of them cross earth s orbit or come very near to us. and we call those n.e.o.s, near earth objects. so one of them comes near otherwise your waste a lot of eng energy going so far out in the solar system. the redirect test. let s look at it here. yeah, good. this is it. the next one we ll say what that is, the dark mission. all right, so this is what they found. they identified this and why do you why are you so appreciative of what they found here as a model for this experiment? that s a great question. if you try to deflect a random astroid, so many things deflect it. it could hit another object.