00:02DART is the double asteroid redirection test.
00:05The Earth is hit by asteroids and pieces of asteroids all the time.
00:10Every year or so we get hit by things maybe the size of a table.
00:14The kind of object that DART is going to visit is an object that's about the size of the Washington
00:19Monument.
00:20Those kinds of objects hit us every few thousand years and they would cause severe damage to a regional scale.
00:26We chose to do this demonstration at a binary asteroid.
00:31It's called Didymos. This is actually approximately the shape of the main asteroid.
00:37It's called Didymos A and it's moon, Didymos B.
00:41What DART will do is DART will hit the secondary.
00:46When it hits the moon it will change the orbit period.
00:48And when it changes the orbit period it affects the timing of when the moon moves in front of or
00:56behind the primary.
00:58Mostly what we're looking to do is change the speed of the incoming object by maybe a centimeter per second
01:05or so.
01:06That's not very fast but if you do it enough seconds in advance you can cause it to miss the
01:11Earth entirely.
01:11DART is a part of a larger collaboration called AIDA which pulls in all the experts of the world who
01:20can help their governments predict and understand what it is that they can do and should do in the event
01:28that there was an incoming threat.
01:29The DART mission that APL is pulling together will be the first mission in that flight line.
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