Press Event

NASA DART Post-Impact Press Briefing

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)

NASA will hold a press briefing after the DART mission impact.

Related Information


Falcon 9 Block 5 | Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)

SpaceX | United States of America
Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA
Nov. 24, 2021, 6:21 a.m.
Status: Launch Successful
Mission:

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the first-ever mission to demonstrate the capability to deflect an asteroid by colliding a spacecraft with it at high speed, a technique known as a kinetic impactor. DART is a planetary defense-driven test of one of the technologies for preventing the Earth impact of a hazardous asteroid: the kinetic impactor. DART's primary objective is to demonstrate a kinetic impact on a small asteroid. The binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos is the target for DART. While Didymos' primary body is approximately 800 meters across, its secondary body has a 150-meter size, which is more typical of the size of asteroids that could pose a more common hazard to Earth. The DART spacecraft will achieve the kinetic impact by deliberately crashing itself into the moonlet at a speed of approximately 6 km/s, with the aid of an onboard camera and sophisticated autonomous navigation software. The collision will change the speed of the moonlet in its orbit around the main body by a fraction of one percent, enough to be measured using telescopes on Earth.

Heliocentric N/A B1063 - Flight Proven ( ) Of Course I Still Love You
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