Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)
Spacex to Launch NASA’s Asteroid-Smashing Mission. Which will blast off in June 2021 and this will smash into the asteroid’s moon around October 2022
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a spacecraft designed to determine whether an asteroid can be redirected with a high-speed collision.
SpaceX will launch the spacecraft toward an asteroid named Didymos about 4 million miles from Earth into the asteroid’s small moon at about 13,000 miles per hour.
About About the DART:
Dart would be NASA’S first mission to demonstrate what is known as the kinetic impactor technique striking the asteroid to shift its orbit to defend against a potential future asteroid impact.
- DART would impact only the smaller of the two bodies, Didymos B. The Didymos system has been closely studied since 2003. The primary body is a rocky S-type object with composition similar to that of many asteroids.
- The composition of its small companion Didymos B is unknown but the size is typical of asteroids that could potentially create regional effects on Earth. After launch DART would fly to Didymos and use an APL-developed onboard autonomous targeting system to aim itself at Didymos B.
- When it strikes the smaller body at a speed about nine times faster than bullet earth-based observatories would be able to see the impact and the resulting change in the orbit of Didymos B around Didymos A.
This kinetic impact technique works by changing the speed of a threatening asteroid by a small fraction of its total velocity but by doing it well before the predicted impact so that this small nudge will add up over time to a big shift of the asteroid’s path away from Earth.
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Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)
NASA is developing Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the first-ever mission that will deflect a near-Earth asteroid. The DART will be built and managed by the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
It is a proposed space probe that would demonstrate the kinetic effects of crashing an impactor spacecraft into an asteroid moon. The mission is intended to test whether a spacecraft impact could successfully deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
The target for DART is an asteroid called Didymos that will have a distant approach to Earth in October 2022 and then again in 2024.
Didymos asteroid system
The Didymos asteroid system has been closely studied since 2003. It has been classified as potentially hazardous asteroid. Its Its primary body is a rocky S-type object, with composition similar to that of many asteroids.
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