Behind the Spacecraft: NASA's DART—The Double Asteroid Redirection Test Today

Behind the Spacecraft: NASA's DART—The Double Asteroid Redirection Test Today

NASA is crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid . . . on purpose! Our DART mission is a first-of-its-kind planetary defense test to change the motion of an asteroid in space so that we could use this technique if an asteroid were ever discovered to be a threat to Earth. 

Follow DART: www.nasa.gov/DART

The DART mission is a test of a technique that could be used to mitigate the threat of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth should one be discovered in the future. DART’s target is not a threat to Earth. While no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, only about 40 percent of those asteroids have been found as of October 2021.

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, will impact its target asteroid—which poses no threat to Earth—on Monday evening, Sept. 26, 2022.

5:30 p.m. EDT (21:30 UTC):  Live feed from the DART spacecraft as it approaches asteroid Didymos: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#media

6 p.m. EDT (22:00 UTC): Live broadcast coverage of the DART mission as the spacecraft attempts to deflect an asteroid from its path (impact targeted for 7:14 p.m. EDT)

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public

This test will show a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it to change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be measured using ground-based telescopes. DART will provide important data to help better prepare for an asteroid that might pose an impact hazard to Earth, should one ever be discovered.

Credits: NASA

Producer/Editor: Jessica Wilde

Producer: Scott Bednar

Videographers: James Lucas and Seth Robinson

Duration: 2 minutes, 29 seconds

Release Date: October 24, 2021

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