NASA launches spacecraft in first ever mission to defend Earth from asteroids
- In Reports
- 06:34 PM, Nov 24, 2021
- Myind Staff
A new mission named as Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was launched by NASA. It is to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards. The DART mission was lifted off at 1.21 am ET on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The launch is managed by NASA's Launch Services Program, based at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX is the launch services provider for the DART mission.
DART - built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) will impact a known asteroid that is not a threat to Earth. Its goal is to slightly change the asteroid's motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.
The test will provide important data to help better prepare for an asteroid that might pose an impact hazard to Earth, should one ever be discovered. LICIACube, a CubeSat riding with DART and provided by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), will be released prior to DART's impact to capture images of the impact and the resulting cloud of ejected matter.
Roughly four years after DART's impact, ESA's (European Space Agency) Hera project will conduct detailed surveys of both asteroids, with particular focus on the crater left by DART's collision and a precise determination of Dimorphos' mass.
"At its core, DART is a mission of preparedness, and it is also a mission of unity," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"This international collaboration involves DART, ASI's LICIACube, and ESA's Hera investigations and science teams, which will follow up on this ground breaking space mission," Thomas added.
DART's one-way trip is to the Didymos asteroid system, which comprises a pair of asteroids. DART's target is the moonlet, Dimorphos, which is approximately 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. The moonlet orbits Didymos, which is approximately 2,560 feet (780 meters) in diameter.
"We have not yet found any significant asteroid impact threat to Earth, but we continue to search for that sizable population we know is still to be found. Our goal is to find any possible impact, years to decades in advance, so it can be deflected with a capability like DART that is possible with the technology we currently have," said Lindley Johnson, planetary defence officer at NASA Headquarters.
Johns Hopkins APL manages the DART mission for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency's Planetary Missions Program Office.
NASA provides support for the mission from several centres, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Glenn Research Centre in Cleveland, and Langley Research Centre in Hampton, Virginia.
Image Courtesy: NASA
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