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 DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission is the first-ever attempt to test planetary defense by deliberately changing the trajectory of an asteroid.
Scheduled to launch this month, the mission will crash a spacecraft into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, aiming to slightly alter its orbital period by a few minutes.
This proactive test, directed by Johns Hopkins APL, aims to develop and understand asteroid deflection capabilities before a real threat emerges, despite the targeted asteroid posing no danger to Earth.
The mission also includes testing an ion propulsion engine and deploying a CubeSat from the Italian Space Agency to record 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.