NASA Holds Briefing for Asteroid Redirection Mission

Friday, November 05, 2021 at 02:57 PM ET

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An Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos binary system. NASA/Johns Hopkins, APL/Steve Gribben

Key Takeaways:

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is the first mission to deliberately alter an asteroid's trajectory as a test of planetary defense.
The DART spacecraft will crash into Dimorphos, the moonlet of a binary asteroid, aiming to slightly change its orbital period, though the asteroid poses no current threat to Earth.
This $330 million project serves as a crucial opportunity to test defense systems before they are urgently needed, launching later this month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The mission also involves testing an ion propulsion engine during its cruise and deploying an Italian CubeSat to capture photos and video of the impact.

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NASA held a news briefing Thursday on its upcoming Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a program directed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which will redirect an asteroid as it approaches Earth’s orbit. The mission is scheduled to launch later this month.

DART, which will launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, will be the first test in history to attempt to change the trajectory of an incoming asteroid.