NASA DART Mission:NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first planetary defence technology demonstration, successfully impacted its asteroid target after flying in space for a total of ten months. This was the first time the space agency attempted to move an asteroid while it was in space.
The DART Mission of NASA
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first planetary defence technology demonstration, successfully impacted its asteroid target after 10 months of flight in space. This was the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space. New York: Monday evening at 7:14 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, made the announcement that the impact had been successful. NASA has decided not to launch the next-generation moon mission rocket, Artemis 1, due to technical difficulties.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement that “At its core, DART marks an extraordinary success for planetary defence. However, it is also a mission of unity with a genuine benefit for all of mankind.” DART is a mission of unity with a real benefit for all of humanity.
This multinational effort converted science fiction into science fact and demonstrated one strategy to defend Earth, which was added by Nelson. “While NASA explores the universe and our home planet, we are also striving to protect that home,” Nelson said.
The impact that the DART spacecraft had with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrated a plausible mitigation mechanism for safeguarding the globe from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet. This technique is a component of the wider planetary defence strategy that NASA has developed.
DART was tasked with intercepting the minuscule moonlet of the asteroid Dimorphos, which measured only 530 feet (160 metres) in diameter. Didymos, a bigger asteroid measuring 2,560 feet (780 metres) in diameter, is the object that it orbits. Both asteroids do not represent a danger to Earth in any way.
The one-way voyage of the mission verified that NASA is capable of successfully navigating a spacecraft to purposely collide with an asteroid in order to deflect it. This method is known as kinetic impact. The study team will now use ground-based telescopes to observe Dimorphos in order to determine if DART’s impact affected the orbit of the asteroid near Didymos.
The researchers anticipate that the hit will decrease Dimorphos’ orbit by about one percent, which is equivalent to roughly ten minutes. One of the key goals of the full-scale test is to exactly measure how much the asteroid was deflected in any given direction.
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