A NASA probe embarks on a historic quest: to alter the trajectory of an asteroid. What do we know about DART, NASA’s asteroid deflection mission?
NASA launched a space probe on November 24, 2021 to deflect an asteroid located eleven million kilometers from Earth. The objective of this mission: to test a planetary defense system, in case a more direct threat appears one day. Just like in the disaster movies — reality here has never seemed so close to fiction.
This DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test, and whose acronym also means dart) consists of projecting a probe to crash into an asteroid in the fall of 2022 in order to test a means of deflecting its trajectory and observing concrete effects of this tactic. The launch was carried out with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the base in Vandenberg, California.
What is NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission?
The purpose of the operation is to test on a large scale “ a technology for defending the Earth against potential dangers from asteroids or comets “Underlines NASA. DART is the US agency’s first-ever mission to change the motion of a natural body in space. NASA scientists believe that in the future DART could help protect humanity from a potential collision with our Earth, even if this kind of risk is extremely unlikely.
When did the DART mission start?
DART successfully took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, USA on November 24, 2021 at 7:21 a.m. (Paris time). The probe sat atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle.
How does the asteroid deflection proposed by the DART mission work?
The American Space Agency takes the precaution of specifying that, during this mission, the probe will impact an asteroid which does not represent any threat for the Earth. The challenge is therefore not to save lives, but to test the device: “ Its goal is to slightly alter the motion of the asteroid 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 could pose a risk of impacting Earth, should such an asteroid be discovered. “says NASA.
Dart will fly to a dual system located 11 million kilometers from Earth. It consists of a main asteroid, which is called Didymos, which measures 780 meters in diameter. Surrounding the latter is another smaller asteroid, Dimorphos.
The objective of the DART mission is not to destroy the moon-asteroid Dimorphos, but to slightly alter its orbit, without touching the orbit of Didymos. The ship “just go give it a little nudge”explained during a press conference Nancy Chabot, of the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, which leads the mission in partnership with NASA.
What’s the next big step for the DART mission?
After taking off on November 23, 2021, it will take about ten months before the spacecraft reaches Dimorphos, an asteroid about 160 meters in diameter, and located eleven million kilometers from Earth. If all goes well, he should then project himself and deflect Dimorphos. See you in September 2022 for the impact test.