By NASA to Launch World’s First Ever Planetary Defense Test Mission
NASA revealed on Thursday evening that the world’s first planetary defense mission is set for lift-off this November.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test or the DART mission’s goal is to test technologies with the ultimate goal of discovering how to prevent a hazardous asteroid from making a collision with Earth. DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space.
Our #DARTMission, the world’s 1st #PlanetaryDefense test mission, will crash into an asteroid far away from Earth to slightly change its motion.
🚀 The spacecraft is fueled, final tests are underway, & liftoff is set for Nov. 24 UTC. Get up to speed: https://t.co/ggxChzeCTO pic.twitter.com/ikkXAxeXUV
— NASA (@NASA) November 4, 2021
According to NASA, the DART spacecraft is designed to impact an asteroid that is not a threat to Earth to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft can effectively change an asteroid’s course. This is in preparation should an Earth-threatening asteroid be found in the future. While there are no known asteroids or comets larger than 140 meters seen to hit Earth for the next 100 years, there is a large population of near-Earth asteroids in space.
“This technique is thought to be the most technologically mature approach for mitigating a potentially hazardous asteroid, and it will help planetary defense experts refine asteroid kinetic impactor computer models, giving insight into how we could deflect potentially dangerous near-Earth objects in the future,” says NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson.
DART spacecraft is set to travel to a near-Earth binary system called Didymos, located 11 million kilometers of Earth. It will target Didymos’ moonlet, which is about 160-meters in size, which is typically the size of asteroids that can potentially cause catastrophic impacts to our planet.
Schematic of the DART mission shows the impact on the moonlet of asteroid (65803) Didymos. Post-impact observations from Earth-based optical telescopes and planetary radar would, in turn, measure the change in the moonlet’s orbit about the parent body.
Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
Kinetic impact deflection will be achieved by deliberately crashing the DART spacecraft into the moonlet at an approximate speed of 6.6 km/s. The collision will change the moonlet’s speed by a fraction of 1 percent, slowing down its orbital period by minutes. This time window gives astronomers enough time to observe and measure this occurrence using telescopes on Earth.
The launch window of the spacecraft will begin on November 24, 2021 UTC until February 2022, launching aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. It will then separate from the launch vehicle and will cruise in space for over a year before it reaches Didymos’ moonlet around late September 2022.
DART mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland Elena Adams calls the DART team’s accomplishment a miracle achieved despite the obstacle brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The reason why we succeeded so far is because our team is excited, extremely sharp, and they genuinely want to show that if an asteroid was coming toward Earth, we could prevent a catastrophe,” she added.
The DART mission is led by APL and managed under NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program at Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and the Science Mission Directorate’s Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC.
When was the last time an asteroid hit Earth? Small asteroids and other tiny particles bombard our planet daily, but almost all of them burn up safely in the atmosphere. Still, scientists like @NASAJPL's Marina Brozovic are keeping their eyes on the sky: https://t.co/IFAZIiKFk3 pic.twitter.com/H4faEDtm0V
— NASA (@NASA) November 3, 2021
SOURCES: NASA, NASA Planetary Defense
