DART: Double Asteroid Redirection Test

Live Science

The first flight mission for planetary defense, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) seeks to validate a method to protect Earth from the threat of an asteroid impact. By smashing a spacecraft into the smaller member of the binary asteroid system Didymos, DART aims to shift an asteroid's orbit through kinetic impact.  Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

Transcript

00:00 DART is the double asteroid redirection test.

00:04 The Earth is hit by asteroids

00:07 and pieces of asteroids all the time. Every year or so we get hit by things

00:12 maybe the size of a table. The kind of object that DART

00:16 is going to visit is an object that's about the size of the Washington Monument.

00:19 Those kinds of objects hit us every few thousand years

00:23 and they would cause severe damage on a regional scale.

00:26 We chose to do this demonstration at a binary asteroid.

00:30 It's called Didymos. This is actually approximately the shape of the

00:35 main asteroid. It's called Didymos A and its moon,

00:39 Didymos B. What DART will do is DART will hit

00:43 the second DART. When it hits the moon it will change the orbit period.

00:48 And when it changes the orbit period it affects the timing of when

00:52 the moon moves in front of or

00:56 behind the primary. Mostly what we're looking to do is change the

01:00 speed of the incoming object by maybe a centimeter per second

01:05 or so. That's not very fast but if you do it enough seconds in advance

01:09 you can cause it to miss the Earth entirely. DART is a

01:13 part of a larger collaboration called AIDA which

01:16 pulls in all the experts of the world who

01:19 can help their governments predict

01:23 and understand what it is that they can do and should do

01:27 in the event that there was an incoming threat. The DART mission that APL is

01:31 pulling together will be the first mission in that flight line.

01:37 DART is the first mission to fly the next sea ion engine.

01:40 It is the first mission to demonstrate smart navigation which means we're going

01:44 to be guiding ourselves

01:45 into the asteroid autonomously. At about four hours out from impact

01:51 smart nav is kicked in and what it does is it uses the imagery from the optical

01:55 payload,

01:56 basically the camera that's on DART, and from the imagery

02:00 we are able to discern Didymos A from Didymos B.

02:03 We have a targeting algorithm that differentiates the two

02:07 and we are aiming for Didymos B. The

02:10 other part of this is the propulsion system that we're demonstrating.

02:13 The NEXE propulsion system is utilizing

02:17 a new generation of gridded ion propulsion technology

02:21 and it's what we're using to allow us to get to the asteroid

02:25 but also allow us a flyby of an object prior to

02:29 our actual encounter. For these vehicles to be able to supply

02:33 the power for the electric propulsion engine we needed higher power

02:37 output. ROSA allows us to be able to

02:40 have a very compact and light mass for launch and then deploy these

02:44 really large arrays once we're out there in space.

02:48 Our planetary launch window opens on June 15, 2021

02:52 and will impact the asteroid in 2022.

02:55 We're very excited to be NASA's first planetary defense mission.

02:59 (upbeat music)

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