DART: all about the historic NASA mission that will try to deflect an asteroid

A NASA spacecraft is just hours away from crashing into the asteroid Dimorphos. This is the DART mission which will test whether humanity can change the direction of a celestial body in space.

In this note we tell you all the details about this historic project.

DART is a NASA mission that will go down in history as the first planetary defense attempt. It consists of a 570 kg spacecraft that will hit the asteroid Dimorphos, a rock 160 meters in diameter considered a near-Earth object, but which does not represent any threat to humanity.

The DART spacecraft, launched on November 24, 2021, will hit Dimorphos with the aim of changing its journey around Didymos, the asteroid around which it rotates 1 km away. The crash will be broadcast live and direct from a camera located inside the ship.

The mission will be a test of the kinetic impact plan, the “simplest and most technologically mature” strategy to defend against a giant space rock headed for Earth (if we ever find one).

Among the hundreds of thousands of asteroids in the solar system, Dimorphos (also called Didymos B) is the perfect guinea pig because it is about to reach its closest approach to the blue planet, when it comes within a distance of 11 million kilometers.

The binary system of asteroids Didymos-Dimorphos is considered nearby because it crosses the Earth’s orbit. However, it does not represent any danger to our planet, according to the US space agency.

DART will impact Dimorphos this Monday September 26 at 23.14 UTC. In Peru time, this will happen at 6:14 pm

The spacecraft, aided by energy from its solar panels, will collide with the asteroid at a speed of 6.6 km/s, which is an acceleration fast enough to leave a crater on its surface.

The impact will be recorded from two perspectives. On the one hand, DRACO the camera inside DART will show the development of the mission in real time until the last seconds. Meanwhile, the minisatellite LICIACube deployed from the ship on September 11, will record the same event 55 kilometers away.

Source-larepublica.pe