At 3:14 on Tuesday morning, when most residents in the Middle East were probably approaching their deepest sleep, a momentous occasion took place some 11 million kilometers out in deep space.
In an exercise carried out by NASA scientists that would ensure that human beings do not succumb to the same fate as the dinosaurs – wiped out by asteroids slamming into planet Earth, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) travelled 10 months in space and precisely located a small, 530-feet diameter steroid moonlet, and successfully impacted the target at 19:14 EDT.
DART is the world’s first planetary defence technology and a first-ever attempt to move an asteroid in space.
Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact with asteroid Dimorphos, paving the way for DART to become a major part of a mitigation technique for protecting Earth from any approaching asteroid or comet. Dimorphos orbits around a larger, 2,560-foot asteroid called Didymos.
Ralph Semmel, APL Director, said: “This first-of-its-kind mission required incredible preparation and precision, and the team exceeded expectations on all counts.
“Beyond the truly exciting success of the technology demonstration, capabilities based on DART could one day be used to change the course of an asteroid to protect our planet and preserve life on Earth as we know it.”
While the results of how much change DART has managed to cause in Dimorphos’ orbit will take time to assess, what is impressive is the fact a spacecraft can be sent into deep space with the precision needed to impact even a small body millions of kilometers away from earth.
The next stage of the investigation is to observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that DART’s impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos. Researchers expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1 percent, or roughly 10 minutes.
The 570-kilogram box-shaped spacecraft intentionally crashed into the smaller of the two moving objects at roughly 22,530 kilometers per hour to slightly slow the asteroid’s orbital speed.
A delighted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said: “At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defense, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity.
“As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact.”
NASA also said that it is awaiting images of the impact to download. Fifteen days before the collision, DART’s CubeSat companion Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), provided by the Italian Space Agency, deployed from the spacecraft to capture images of the impact and of the asteroid’s resulting cloud of ejected matter. Because LICIACube doesn’t carry a large antenna, images will be downlinked to Earth one by one in the coming weeks.
Roughly four years from now, the European Space Agency’s Hera project will conduct detailed surveys of both Dimorphos and Didymos, with a particular focus on the crater left by DART’s collision and precise measurement of Dimorphos’ mass.
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