Dimorphos

Ten months after launch, NASA's asteroid-deflecting DART spacecraft neared a planned impact with its target on Monday in a test of the world's first planetary defense system, designed to prevent a doomsday collision with Earth.The cube-shaped "impactor" vehicle, roughly the size of a vending machine with two rectangular solar arrays, was on course to fly into the asteroid Dimorphos, about as large as a football stadium, and self-destruct around 7pm EDT (4:30 IST) some 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth.The…

A NASA spacecraft was set to smash into an asteroid early in a bid to test a technology to defend Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards in the future.NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a first such mission, was set to impact its target asteroid -- which poses no threat to Earth -- at 7.14 p.m. on Monday (4.44 a.m. on Tuesday IST)."This test will show a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it to change the asteroid's motion in a way that can be…

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) team has completed an observation campaign to confirm the orbit of DART's target asteroid Dimorphos. DART is a spacecraft designed to impact an asteroid as part of a test to verify if the method can be effective in changing the course of an asteroid in the future, for planetary defense. The latest campaign was undertaken using world's most powerful telescopes and supports the team's calculations to zero in on Dimorphos' orbit. The calculations were made in early 2021 and are…

DART Animation. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APLDART Team Confirms Orbit of Targeted AsteroidUsing some of the world’s most powerful telescopes, the DART investigation team completed a six-night observation campaign last month to confirm earlier calculations of the orbit of Dimorphos—DART’s asteroid target. Dimorphos is in orbit around its larger parent asteroid, Didymos. These observations confirm where the asteroid is expected to be located at the time of impact. DART, which is the world’s first attempt to change the…

Final rehearsals for NASA's planetary defence test are already underway. The one-of-a-kind mission, which will launch next week, is set to intentionally crash a spacecraft into an asteroid to deflect its path. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will attempt to hit the moonlet asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos. None of these asteroids pose any threat to Earth and this mission is only intended as a test and technology demonstrator, according to the space agency. The mission, which…

NASA launched a spacecraft Tuesday night on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth.The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a $330 million (roughly Rs. 2,460 crore) project with echoes of the Bruce Willis movie Armageddon.If all goes well, the boxy, 1,200-pound (540kg) craft will slam head-on into Dimorphos, an…

The DART mission will be the first to test asteroid deflection through kinetic impactor technology. Illustration: NASAIn order to protect the Earth, some sacrifices must be made. NASA’s DART spacecraft is currently on its way to a binary asteroid system known as Didymos and will essentially crash into one tiny asteroid to test out a deflection method. But rather than leaving behind an impact crater as initially intended, the DART spacecraft may actually deform the mini-moon, making it nearly unrecognizable.Using a new…