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We’re only one month out from affect — affect of NASA’s DART spacecraft into an asteroid, that’s.
Managed by the Johns Hopkins Utilized Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland for NASA, the Double Asteroid Redirection Check (DART) mission is the first-ever planetary protection check. On Sept. 26 at 7:14 p.m. EDT (2314 GMT), the DART spacecraft will crash into the asteroid Dimorphos at roughly 15,000 mph (24,000 kph) in an try to change the celestial physique’s trajectory round a bigger asteroid referred to as Didymos.
Though Dimorphos will not be on a collision course with Earth, the mission is a check to see if “kinetic affect know-how” would work to deflect any potential Earth-bound asteroids.
Associated: NASA’s DART asteroid-impact mission defined in photos
The mission launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 24, 2021. Since then, DART has traveled roughly 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) to the binary asteroid system Didymos. Didymos is the bigger asteroid at 2,500 ft (780 meters) in diameter, whereas Dimorphos is the smaller “moonlet” asteroid at 525 ft (160 m) in diameter. For comparability, the asteroid that powerfully exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 was 60 ft (18 m) in diameter.
The selection of concentrating on a binary system was intentional. As a result of the 2 asteroids revolve round each other — they usually each will be noticed by Earth-based telescopes — we’ll rapidly be capable of see if the DART spacecraft’s affect shifted Dimorphos’ orbit.
Members of the general public will be capable of view stay protection of the affect on NASA TV, NASA’s web site, and NASA social media pages starting at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) on Sept. 26.
Nonetheless, do not anticipate to see stay video of the affect itself. Though DART is supplied with the Reconnaissance and Asteroid Digital camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO) digital camera, that instrument is used to autonomously navigate the spacecraft to Dimorphos, in addition to {photograph} the asteroid’s floor as DART approaches. However the affect will minimize off the digital camera’s knowledge feed when it destroys the spacecraft.
Nonetheless, the mission does embody the Italian Area Company’s Mild Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) tagging alongside for the trip. Earlier than affect, DART will jettison LICIACube, which can extra slowly fly by Dimorphos to {photograph} the affect and its, properly, affect on the Didymos binary system.
In about 4 years, nonetheless, the European Area Company’s Hera mission will rendezvous with Didymos and Dimorphos to review DART’s affect intimately.
However that is nonetheless a good distance down the street. For now, we’ll simply be bracing for subsequent month’s affect.
Comply with Stefanie Waldek on Twitter @StefanieWaldek. Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Fb.
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