NASA’s DART Mission Hits Asteroid in First-Ever Planetary Defense Test

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — After 10 months flying in house, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary protection expertise demonstration – efficiently impacted its asteroid goal on Monday, the company’s first try to maneuver an asteroid in house.

Mission management on the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, introduced the profitable influence at 7:14 p.m. EDT

As part of NASA’s total planetary defense technique, DART’s influence with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrates a viable mitigation approach for shielding the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one had been found.

“At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defense, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity,” mentioned NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth.”

DART focused the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small physique simply 530 toes (160 meters) in diameter. It orbits a bigger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid known as Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a risk to Earth.

The mission’s one-way journey confirmed NASA can efficiently navigate a spacecraft to deliberately collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a method generally known as kinetic influence.

The investigation crew will now observe Dimorphos utilizing ground-based telescopes to verify that DART’s influence altered the asteroid’s orbit round Didymos. Researchers count on the influence to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1%, or roughly 10 minutes; exactly measuring how a lot the asteroid was deflected is likely one of the major functions of the full-scale check.

“Planetary Defense is a globally unifying effort that affects everyone living on Earth,” mentioned Thomas Zurbuchen, affiliate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now we know we can aim a spacecraft with the precision needed to impact even a small body in space. Just a small change in its speed is all we need to make a significant difference in the path an asteroid travels.”

The spacecraft’s sole instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), along with a classy steering, navigation and management system that works in tandem with Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav) algorithms, enabled DART to establish and distinguish between the 2 asteroids, focusing on the smaller physique.

These methods guided the 1,260-pound (570-kilogram) box-shaped spacecraft by means of the ultimate 56,000 miles (90,000 kilometers) of house into Dimorphos, deliberately crashing into it at roughly 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) per hour to barely sluggish the asteroid’s orbital velocity. DRACO’s ultimate photographs, obtained by the spacecraft seconds earlier than influence, revealed the floor of Dimorphos in close-up element.

Fifteen days earlier than influence, DART’s CubeSat companion Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), offered by the Italian Space Agency, deployed from the spacecraft to seize photographs of DART’s influence and of the asteroid’s ensuing cloud of ejected matter. In tandem with the pictures returned by DRACO, LICIACube’s photographs are meant to supply a view of the collision’s results to assist researchers higher characterize the effectiveness of kinetic influence in deflecting an asteroid. Because LICIACube would not carry a big antenna, photographs will probably be downlinked to Earth one after the other in the approaching weeks.

“DART’s success provides a significant addition to the essential toolbox we must have to protect Earth from a devastating impact by an asteroid,” mentioned Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer. “This demonstrates we are no longer powerless to prevent this type of natural disaster. Coupled with enhanced capabilities to accelerate finding the remaining hazardous asteroid population by our next Planetary Defense mission, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, a DART successor could provide what we need to save the day.”

With the asteroid pair inside 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) of Earth, a world crew is utilizing dozens of telescopes stationed world wide and in house to look at the asteroid system. Over the approaching weeks, they may characterize the ejecta produced and exactly measure Dimorphos’ orbital change to find out how successfully DART deflected the asteroid. The outcomes will assist validate and enhance scientific pc fashions important to predicting the effectiveness of this system as a dependable methodology for asteroid deflection.

“This first-of-its-kind mission required incredible preparation and precision, and the team exceeded expectations on all counts,” mentioned APL Director Ralph Semmel. “Beyond the truly exciting success of the technology demonstration, capabilities based on DART could one day be used to change the course of an asteroid to protect our planet and preserve life on Earth as we know it.”

Roughly 4 years from now, the European Space Agency’s Hera challenge will conduct detailed surveys of each Dimorphos and Didymos, with a selected deal with the crater left by DART’s collision and a exact measurement of Dimorphos’ mass.

Johns Hopkins APL manages the DART mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a challenge of the company’s Planetary Missions Program Office.

For extra details about DART, go to:

https://www.nasa.gov/dart

SOURCE NASA



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