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 YouLandsat 9 is a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey to continue the Landsat program's critical role in monitoring, understanding and managing the land resources needed to sustain human life. Landsat 9, like Landsat 8, has a higher imaging capacity than past Landsats, allowing more valuable data to be added to the Landsat global land archive. Its operational orbit is a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 705 km for a mission lifetime of at least 5 years.
Sun-Synchronous OrbitFirst flight of the new Firefly Alpha small sat launcher developed by Firefly Aerospace. It will carry Firefly’s DREAM (Dedicated Research & Education Accelerator Mission), which includes various payloads like cubesats, personal items, pictures, DNA samples and more to inspire young people to pursue STEM education.
Low Earth Orbit