The world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which had been in space for ten months, successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday. This was the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space.
At 7:14 p.m. EDT, mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, told everyone that the impact went well.
DART’s collision with the asteroid Dimorphos illustrates a workable mitigation strategy for defending the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, should one be discovered as part of NASA’s overall planetary defense strategy.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “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. As NASA studies the universe and Earth, this international project “turned science fiction into science fact and showed one way to protect Earth.”
DART focused on the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a tiny body with a diameter of only 530 feet (160 meters). It revolves around the larger Didymos, a 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid. There is no danger to Earth from either asteroid.
The successful one-way flight of the mission showed that NASA can direct a spacecraft to hit an asteroid with enough force to change its path.
The investigation team will now use ground-based telescopes to observe Dimorphos in order to verify that the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos was altered by the impact of DART. One of the main goals of the full-scale test is to precisely measure how much the asteroid was deflected. Scientists think that Dimorphos’ orbit will change by about 1%, or about 10 minutes, because of the impact.
Every person who lives on Earth is impacted by planetary defense, according to Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We now know that a spacecraft can be pointed with the accuracy required to impact even a small space object. “The path an asteroid takes can be significantly altered with just a slight change in speed.
DART was able to recognize and differentiate between the two asteroids, allowing it to target the smaller body. The spacecraft’s sole instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO), along with a sophisticated guidance, navigation, and control system that works in tandem with Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav) algorithms, made this possible.
With the intention of slightly slowing the asteroid’s orbital speed, these systems guided the box-shaped spacecraft, weighing 1,260 pounds (570 kilograms), through the final 56,000 miles (90,000 kilometers) of space and into Dimorphos. The final images from DRACO, taken by the spacecraft just before impact, provided a detailed view of Dimorphos’ surface.
The Italian Space Agency’s Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), a companion CubeSat for DART, was launched from the spacecraft fifteen days before impact to take pictures of the impact and the asteroid’s ejected material cloud. The LICIACube images are meant to provide a view of the collision’s effects in conjunction with the DRACO images in order to aid researchers in better analyzing the efficiency of kinetic impact in deflecting an asteroid. Since LICIACube lacks a large antenna, pictures will be downlinked to Earth one at a time over the next few weeks.
According to Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer, “DART’s success provides a significant addition to the essential toolbox we must have to protect Earth from a devastating asteroid impact.” “This shows that we are no longer helpless against this kind of natural catastrophe. A Double Asteroid Redirection Test successor might be what we need to save the day when combined with improved abilities to speed up finding the remaining population of dangerous asteroids by our next planetary defense mission, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor. ”
An international team is utilizing dozens of telescopes positioned all over the world and in space to observe the asteroid system because the pair of asteroids is only 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth. To ascertain how successfully DART deflected the asteroid, they will characterize the ejecta created and precisely measure the orbital change of Dimorphos over the ensuing weeks. The results will help confirm and improve the scientific computer models that are needed to figure out how well this method will work to move asteroids.
According to APL Director Ralph Semmel, “This first-of-its-kind mission required incredible preparation and precision, and the team exceeded expectations on all counts.” “DART-based capabilities could be used one day to change the path of an asteroid to protect our planet and keep life as we know it on Earth,” said the really exciting success of the technology demonstration.
In about four years, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will do detailed surveys of Dimorphos and Didymos, focusing on the crater left by the DART collision and getting a good idea of Dimorphos’ mass.
As a project of NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office, the DART mission is run by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office at Johns Hopkins APL.
Visit to view the last pictures before Double Asteroid Redirection Test hits.
