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Double Asteroid Redirection Test
Sign in to saveAlso known as DART, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test
first mission in NASA's Solar System Exploration program; impact of asteroid Dimorphos in 65803 Didymos system
Key facts
- Names
- DART
- Mission type
- Planetary defense test mission
- Operator
- NASA / APL
- Website
- dart .jhuapl .edu /Mission
- Mission duration
- 10 months, 1 day
- Spacecraft
- DART impactor LICIACube CubeSat
- Manufacturer
- Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University
- Launch mass
- DART : 610 kg (1,340 lb) LICIACube : 14 kg (31 lb)
- Dimensions
- DART : 1.8 × 1.9 × 2.6 m (5.9 × 6.2 × 8.5 ft) ROSA : 8.5 × 2.4 m (27.9 × 7.9 ft) (each)
- Power
- 6.6 kW
- Launch date
- 24 November 2021, 06:21:02 ( 2021-11-24UTC06:21:02Z ) UTC
- Rocket
- Falcon 9 Block 5 B1063-3
- Launch site
- Vandenberg , SLC ‑ 4E
- Contractor
- SpaceX
- Impact date
- 26 September 2022, 23:14 UTC
- Spacecraft component
- LICIACube (deployed from DART)
- Closest approach
- 26 September 2022, ~23:17 UTC
- Distance
- 56.7 km (35.2 mi)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Official website
- dart.jhuapl.edu
- Image
- DART spacecraft model 2.png
Show 4 more facts
- Commons category
- Double Asteroid Redirection Test
- UTC date of spacecraft launch
- 2021-11-24
- hashtag
- DARTMission
- price
- 324000000
Sources (7)
via Wikidata · CC0
~27 min read
Article
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was a NASA space mission to test a method of planetary defense against near-Earth objects (NEOs). It was designed to assess how much a spacecraft impact can deflect an asteroid by hitting it head-on. The target asteroid, Dimorphos, is a 525 feet (160 m) wide moonlet of the asteroid Didymos; neither asteroid poses an impact threat to Earth, but their joint characteristics made them an ideal target.
Launched on 24 November 2021, the DART spacecraft collided with Dimorphos at 14,000 mph (23,000 km/h) on 26 September 2022 about 6.8 million miles (10.9 million kilometers) from Earth. The collision shortened Dimorphos's orbit around Didymos by 32 minutes, greatly in excess of the pre-defined success threshold of 73 seconds. Deflection resulted from the ejection of debris which caused a recoil that was substantially larger than the impact itself. The collision also very slightly increased the asteroid pair's orbital speed around the Sun—an effect directly relevant to the goal of planetary protection by changing an object's path through space.