The test aims to demonstrate our technological readiness in case an actual asteroid threat is detected in the future.
The mission will travel to the asteroid Didymos, a member of theAmor group of asteroids.
Every 12 hours Didymos is orbited by a mini-moon, or moonlet, Dimorphos.
This smaller half of the pair will be DARTs target.
Are we facing an extinction threat from asteroids?
Could that happen now?
40% off TNW Conference!
Almost all asteroids of this size disintegrate in the atmosphere and are usually harmless.
There is aninverse relationshipbetween the size of these object and the frequency of impact events.
Asteroids with a 1km diameter strike Earth every 500,000 years, on average.
Asteroids with an approximate 5km diameter impact Earth about once every 20 million years.
TheTorino scaleis a method for categorizing the impact hazard associated with a near-Earth object (NEO).
TheChicxulub impact(which is attributed to the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs) was a Torino scale 10.
(you’re free to keepup to date too).
With a 500m diameter, Bennu is capable of creating a 5km crater on Earth.
However, NASA has also said there is a 99.943% chance the asteroid will miss us.
This animation shows DARTs trajectory around the Sun.
The larger Didymos is 780m in diameter and thus makes a better target for DART to aim for.
The mass of Dimorphos is 4.8 million tonnes and the mass of DART at impact will be about 550kg.
While this may not seem like a lot, 1% is actually a promising shift.
The DART mission dates and timeline events.
DART will also deploy a small satellite ten days before impact to capture everything.
This is NASAs first mission dedicated to demonstrating aplanetary defense technique.
At a cost of US$330 million, its relatively cheap in space mission terms.
TheJames Webb Telescopeset to launch next month, costs close toUS$10 billion.
There will be little to no debris from DARTs impact.
Another train comes along and collides with it.
The trains wont break apart, or destroy one another, but will move off together.
The stationary one will gain some speed, and the one impacting it will lose some speed.
The trains combine to become a new system with different speeds than before.
So we wont experience any impact, ripples or debris from the DART mission.
Is the effort really worth it?
That said, we havemissed objects in the past.
In October 2021,Asteroid UA_1passed about 3,047km from Earths surface, over Antarctica.
We missed it because it approached from the direction of the Sun.
At just 1m in size it wouldnt have caused much damage, but we should have seen it coming.
Building a deflection system for a potential major asteroid threat would be difficult.
We would have to act quickly and hit the target with very good aim.
This gadget could also be used to fire masses at close-passing asteroids.
