We’re only one month out from influence — influence of NASA’s DART spacecraft into an asteroid, that’s.
Managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland for NASA, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the first-ever planetary defense take a look at. On Sept. 26 at 7:14 p.m. EDT (2314 GMT), the DART spacecraft will crash into the asteroid Dimorphos at roughly 15,000 mph (24,000 kph) in an try to change the celestial physique’s trajectory round a bigger asteroid referred to as Didymos.
Although Dimorphos isn’t on a collision course with Earth, the mission is a take a look at to see if “kinetic impact technology” would work to deflect any potential Earth-bound asteroids.
Related: NASA’s DART asteroid-impact mission explained in pictures
The mission launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 24, 2021. Since then, DART has traveled roughly 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) to the binary asteroid system Didymos. Didymos is the bigger asteroid at 2,500 ft (780 meters) in diameter, whereas Dimorphos is the smaller “moonlet” asteroid at 525 ft (160 m) in diameter. For comparability, the asteroid that powerfully exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 was 60 ft (18 m) in diameter.
The alternative of concentrating on a binary system was intentional. Because the 2 asteroids revolve round each other — they usually each may be noticed by Earth-based telescopes — we’ll shortly be capable of see if the DART spacecraft’s influence shifted Dimorphos’ orbit.
Members of the general public will be capable of view reside protection of the influence on NASA TV, NASA’s web site, and NASA social media pages starting at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) on Sept. 26.
However, do not anticipate to see reside video of the influence itself. Although DART is provided with the Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO) digicam, that instrument is used to autonomously navigate the spacecraft to Dimorphos, in addition to {photograph} the asteroid’s floor as DART approaches. But the influence will lower off the digicam’s information feed when it destroys the spacecraft.
However, the mission does embrace the Italian Space Agency’s Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) tagging alongside for the trip. Before influence, DART will jettison LICIACube, which is able to extra slowly fly by Dimorphos to {photograph} the influence and its, nicely, influence on the Didymos binary system.
In about 4 years, nevertheless, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will rendezvous with Didymos and Dimorphos to check DART’s influence intimately.
But that is nonetheless a good distance down the highway. For now, we’ll simply be bracing for subsequent month’s influence.
Follow Stefanie Waldek on Twitter @StefanieWaldek. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
