NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, will test a method of deflecting an asteroid for planetary defense, using the “kinetic impactor” technique.
DART mission key facts
– Launched: Nov. 24, 2021 at 1:20 a.m. EDT (0620 GMT)
– Launch site: Space Launch Complex 4, Vandenberg Space Force Base in California
– Rocket: SpaceX Falcon 9
– Target: Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos.
– Target distance from Earth: 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers)
– Estimated cost: $313.9 million (£227.9 million)
– DART impact: Sept. 26, 2022.
DART will slam into a small asteroid — Dimorphos — in a bid to change the moonlet’s orbital speed by a fraction of a percent according to NASA (opens in new tab). Though Dimorphos poses no threat to Earth, the ambitious mission mimics what NASA scientists would do if an asteroid were headed toward Earth.
The collision is expected to occur at 7:14 p.m. EDT (2314 GMT) on Sept. 26, 2022. You can watch all the action live here on Space.com on NASA TV and on the agency’s website (opens in new tab).
Related: NASA’s DART asteroid-impact mission explained in pictures
Daisy Dobrijevic
Daisy joined Space.com as a reference writer in February 2022, before then she was a staff writer for our sister publication All About Space magazine.
The DART mission was launched at 10:20 p.m. local time on Nov. 23, 2021, (1:20 a.m. EDT, or 0620 GMT Nov. 24) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Space Launch Complex 4 at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The mission demonstrates the high level of international collaboration that is needed for such an ambitious mission. Though the DART mission is managed by the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (opens in new tab) (JHUAPL), scientists and engineers from around the world have come together to contribute.
“We’ve worked really closely with our European colleagues and colleagues all over the world,” Ellen Howell, a senior research scientist at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and a co-investigator for DART, told Space.com. Though DART is a test, a similar level of international cooperation would be essential in the case of a real impact, she said.
Why is the DART mission important?
Though the threat from asteroid impacts is small, it is a threat nonetheless, and something we should be prepared for. We only need to look at past impact events such as the massive Chicxulub asteroid impact that is credited with the…
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