November 24, 2021
RELEASE 21-161
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The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART
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NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s
first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against
potential asteroid or comet hazards, launched Wednesday at 1:21 a.m. EST on a
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space
Force Base in California.
Just one part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy,
DART – built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL)
in Laurel, Maryland – will impact a known asteroid that is not a threat to
Earth. Its goal is to slightly change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can
be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.
DART will show that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate
to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it – a method of deflection
called kinetic impact. The test will provide important data to help better
prepare for an asteroid that might pose an impact hazard to Earth, should one
ever be discovered. LICIACube, a CubeSat riding with DART and provided by the
Italian Space Agency (ASI), will be released prior to DART’s impact to capture
images of the impact and the resulting cloud of ejected matter. Roughly four
years after DART’s impact, ESA’s (European Space Agency) Hera project will
conduct detailed surveys of both asteroids, with particular focus on the crater
left by DART’s collision and a precise determination of Dimorphos’ mass.
“DART is turning science fiction into science fact and is a
testament to NASA’s proactivity and innovation for the benefit of all,” said
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “In addition to all the ways NASA studies our
universe and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this
test will help prove out one viable way to protect our planet from a hazardous
asteroid should one ever be discovered that is headed toward Earth.”
At 2:17 a.m., DART separated from the second stage of
the rocket. Minutes later, mission operators received the first spacecraft
telemetry data and started the process of orienting the spacecraft to a safe
position for deploying its solar arrays. About two hours later, the spacecraft
completed the successful unfurling of its two, 28-foot-long, roll-out solar
arrays. They will power both the spacecraft and NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster – Commercial ion engine,
one of several technologies being tested on DART for future application on
space missions.
“At its core, DART is a mission of preparedness, and it is
also a mission of unity,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for
the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This
international collaboration involves DART, ASI’s LICIACube, and ESA’s Hera
investigations and science teams, which will follow up on this groundbreaking
space mission.”
DART’s one-way trip is to the Didymos asteroid system, which
comprises a pair of asteroids. DART’s target is the moonlet, Dimorphos, which
is approximately 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. The moonlet orbits Didymos,
which is approximately 2,560 feet (780 meters) in diameter.
Since Dimorphos orbits Didymos at much a slower relative
speed than the pair orbits the Sun, the result of DART’s kinetic impact within
the binary system can be measured much more easily than a change in the orbit
of a single asteroid around the Sun.
“We have not yet found any significant asteroid impact threat
to Earth, but we continue to search for that sizable population we know is
still to be found. Our goal is to find any possible impact, years to decades in
advance, so it can be deflected with a capability like DART that is possible
with the technology we currently have,” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense
officer at NASA Headquarters. “DART is one aspect of NASA’s work to prepare
Earth should we ever be faced with an asteroid hazard. In tandem with this
test, we are preparing the Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission, an space-based
infrared telescope scheduled for launch later this decade and designed to
expedite our ability to discover and characterize the potentially hazardous
asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit.”
The spacecraft will intercept the Didymos system between
Sept. 26 and Oct. 1, 2022, intentionally slamming into Dimorphos at roughly 4
miles per second (6 kilometers per second). Scientists estimate the kinetic
impact will shorten Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos by several minutes.
Researchers will precisely measure that change using telescopes on Earth. Their
results will validate and improve scientific computer models critical to
predicting the effectiveness of the kinetic impact as a reliable method for
asteroid deflection.
“It is an indescribable feeling to see something you’ve been
involved with since the ‘words on paper’ stage become real and launched into
space,” said Andy Cheng, one of the DART investigation leads at Johns Hopkins
APL and the individual who came up with the idea of DART. “This is just the end
of the first act, and the DART investigation and engineering teams have much
work to do over the next year preparing for the main event ─ DART’s kinetic
impact on Dimorphos. But tonight we celebrate!”
DART’s single instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and
Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), will turn on a week from now
and provide first images from the spacecraft. DART will continue to travel just
outside of Earth’s orbit around the Sun for the next 10 months until Didymos
and Dimorphos will be a relatively close 6.8 million miles (11 million
kilometers) from Earth.
A sophisticated guidance, navigation, and control system,
working together with algorithms called Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real
Time Navigation (SMART Nav), will enable the DART spacecraft to identify and
distinguish between the two asteroids. The system will then direct the
spacecraft toward Dimorphos. This process will all occur within roughly an hour
of impact.
Johns Hopkins APL manages the DART mission for NASA's
Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary
Missions Program Office. NASA provides support for the mission from several
centers, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California,
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Johnson Space Center in
Houston, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Virginia. The launch is managed by NASA’s Launch Services Program, based
at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
SpaceX is the launch services provider for the DART
mission.
For more information about the DART mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/dartmission
-end-
Press Contacts
Grey Hautaluoma / Josh Handal / Alana Johnson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0668 / 202-358-2307 / 202-358-1501
grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov / joshua.a.handal@nasa.gov /
alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
Justyna Surowiec / Michael Buckley
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
240-302-9268 / 240-228-7536
Justyna.Surowiec@jhuapl.edu / michael.buckley@jhuapl.edu
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