DART Impacts Asteroid on September 26
NASA Invites Media to Witness World's First Planetary Defense Test
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world's first mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, will impact its target asteroid—which poses no threat to Earth—at 7:14 p.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 26.
Among other activities, NASA will host a televised briefing beginning at 6 p.m. on Sept. 26 from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. APL is the builder and manager of the DART spacecraft for NASA. [Ed Comment: For timings please see below-JR]
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 measured using ground-based telescopes. DART will provide important data to help better prepare for an asteroid that might pose an impact hazard to Earth, should one ever be discovered.
Everything you need to know about NASA's DART mission happening on Monday
News and Advice on the World's Latest Innovations:
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is meant to test the technology that could defend Earth from being struck by potential asteroid or comet hazards in the future. You do remember the dinosaur incident, right? NASA says humankind won't have the same fate.
[...] DRACO will provide the SMART Nav with images, and then the SMART Nav will collect and process these images using computational algorithms to determine the spacecraft's course, according to NASA.
[...] A big component of the mission, in addition to testing whether the asteroid is capable of reaching the target, is determining the reliability of the approach, assessing how best to apply it to future planetary defense scenarios, and determining how accurate the computer simulations are and how well they reflect the behavior of a real asteroid, says NASA.
To see how much the asteroid actually moves, the team will be harnessing the power of its telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Hubble Space Telescope and Lucy Space Probe.
The NASA team is very confident that the mission will go according to plan, reassuring reporters that the rehearsals and simulations have prepared the team for this momentous occasion.
"All subsystems on the spacecraft are green," said Edward Reynolds, DART Project Manager, during the briefing.
To tune in and watch the mission on Monday, you have two different options: a live broadcast and a quiet live feed of the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) camera.
The DRACO images will be on NASA TV starting at 2:30 PM ET/5:30 PM ET.
The live coverage will begin at 3 PM PT/6 PM ET on NASA TV. The collision is set to occur at 4:14 PM PT/7:14 PM ET. (23:14 UTC)
Also from takyon:
Bonus: NASA's Juno Will Perform Close Flyby of Jupiter's Icy Moon Europa
On Thursday, Sept. 29, at 2:36 a.m. PDT (5:36 a.m. EDT), NASA's Juno spacecraft will come within 222 miles (358 kilometers) of the surface of Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Europa. The solar-powered spacecraft is expected to obtain some of the highest-resolution images ever taken of portions of Europa's surface, as well as collect valuable data on the moon's interior, surface composition, and ionosphere, along with its interaction with Jupiter's magnetosphere.
[...] The close flyby will modify Juno's trajectory, reducing the time it takes to orbit Jupiter from 43 to 38 days. It will be the closest a NASA spacecraft has approached Europa since Galileo came within 218 miles (351 kilometers) on Jan. 3, 2000. In addition, this flyby marks the second encounter with a Galilean moon during Juno's extended mission. The mission explored Ganymede in June 2021 and plans to make close approaches of Io in 2023 and 2024.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 26 2022, @11:34PM
7:09 PM EDT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Didymos_dimorphos_2309_092622.png [wikipedia.org]
7:14 PM EDT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dimorphos.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Hubble and JWST observed the impact.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by hubie on Monday September 26 2022, @11:36PM (2 children)
I didn't catch whether they were hitting it from the front or behind. Do they expect its orbital period to increase or decrease?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday September 27 2022, @07:44AM (1 child)
BBC (reporting by a member (professor) of the DART team, and another from a UK university who had been involved in the planning of the mission) explained that the collision itself would have an almost negligible effect on reducing the speed of the asteroid but that the change in speed would be enough to cause a far more significant change in the asteroid's orbit around its larger partner. It is the change in orbit that they are expecting (hoping!) will be detected and measured by Hubble and JWST.
I'm do not know how much energy DART will have transferred to the asteroid at the time of the collision. The asteroid was said to be around 500 metres in diameter. Again, BBC reporting said the change in speed would me measured in millimeters/sec - which for something moving at a much faster rate seems insignificant, and by itself would be undetectable.
I don't suppose there will be many identifiable pieces of the DART to be found....
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday September 27 2022, @09:03AM
CORRECTION: The BBC have corrected themselves. The diameter of Dimorphos is 500 feet, not metres.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday September 27 2022, @07:31AM
I have got to say that it was an impressive achievement just to get DART to actually collide with the asteroid after a journey of around 7,000,000 miles. Initially there was only 1 dot in the middle of the TGO screen which gradually grew over the hour or so that I watched it. But it also became easier to see the much small asteroid 'near' to the initial sighting, and it was the much smaller of the 2 that was the target.
The last few minutes of images will provide lots to keep the scientist busy for a while but the collision itself was, of course, an anticlimax. I'm not sure what I had hoped to see but my unrealistic expectations have been spoiled by sci-fi TV and movies, I guess. It may well have been spectacular if one had been able to watch but, of course, at the moment of impact all images ceased. There are the images from the Italian-built satellite (LICIACube) which was there to watch on our behalf and they will begin to download today. There may well be something far more violent in them than the images that we have seen so far, and there will certainly be a lot more data for the scientists to study. I will wait to see what data Hubble and JWST provide to find out what effect the collision actually had on the path of the asteroid, or even if the asteroid remains in essentially one piece.
Well done, DART team!
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]