NASA succeeds in 1st planetary defense test mission

Organization: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Country: USA
Website: dart.jhuapl.edu
Year Founded: 1942
Number of Employees: 500+

Description:

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft, developed for NASA by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, made impact with an asteroid called Dimorphos on September 26, 2022. The DART spacecraft smashed into the asteroid at 3.7 miles per second, around 85 feet from the center of the rock. The collision knocked the asteroid off its course.

Analysis:
The goal behind DART was to perform an on-orbit demonstration of asteroid deflection. While Dimorphos wasn’t on a collision course with Earth, NASA wanted to test its ability to deflect an asteroid with a kinetic impactor before an Earth-threatening asteroid is discovered. Dimorphos had a diameter of 492 feet. Before DART’s impact, it took Dimorphos about 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit a larger asteroid, this period was shortened by 33 minutes after the impact. DART navigated itself to the asteroid more than 6.8 million miles from Earth to crash into Dimorphos using algorithms called SMART Nav (Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation). SMART Nav allowed the impactor to identify Dimorphos and direct itself toward the asteroid. – Brianna Wessling

Search The Robot Report