Normally, NASA wants its probes to make contact with other objects in space in a very controlled manner. You want land- a rover on Mars, no drop for example a rover on Mars. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is different. This time, NASA is going to hit the ion pedal and just ram the damn thing with their spaceship, because fuck you, asteroid. They will also learn a lot about the potential to redirect dangerous asteroids so they don’t become meteors hitting Earth. But mostly because they don’t like the way that asteroid looks at them.
You know the DART project is exciting because it’s in the Planetary Defense section of the NASA website, which sounds like part of a movie with lasers and at least one astronaut tumbling into space.
The DART spacecraft is a boxy, ion engine kinetic impactor with interesting roll-out solar panels, and looks like this:
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The ion engine is especially interesting because it is a first application of a propulsion system likely to be used on future spacecraft:
The DART spacecraft will use the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster – Commercial (NEXT-C)solar powered electric propulsion system as part of space propulsion. NEXT-C is a next-generation system based on the Dawn spacecraft propulsion system developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Using electric propulsion, DART could benefit from significant flexibility in the mission timeline while demonstrating next-generation ion engine technology, with applications for potential future NASA missions. “
The targeted asteroid is an interesting choice because it is real two asteroids. The asteroid is called Didymos and is a binary asteroid because it has its own little “moonlet”, a smaller asteroid orbiting Didymos. This moonlet is the target of DART.
Using the solar-powered ion engine and advanced autonomous targeting software, DART rams itself into the moonlet, changing the speed of the moonlet’s orbit around Didymos, a change that can be studied by Earth-based telescopes.
Studying the change in the orbit path can help us figure out how most effectively we can strike a potential asteroid affecting Earth naturally enough to miss our planet, where we not only keep our stuff, but also its location. of each Shake Shack known to mankind.
As with any good, modern fight, there will also be a witness who will get the whole thing on video, in this case a small Cubesat that will be released prior to impact and may or may not upload the footage to World star
At Vice there is a great interview with astronomer Andy Rivkin who gives a great explanation of the DART mission and what it hopes to achieve:
So yes, take that, asteroid. That little punk moonlet has until November 24 to February 15, 2022 to get his shit together because that’s it current start window for DART.