Normally, NASA likes its sins to make contact with other objects in space in a very controlled way. You want country a wanderer on Mars, not fall a rover on Mars, for example. The Dual Asteroid Conversion Test (DART) is different. This time, NASA is going to step on the ion pedal and just bump the damn thing with their spaceship, because fuck you, asteroid. They will also learn a lot about the possible diversion of dangerous asteroids to become meteors hitting the earth. But mostly because they do not like how that asteroid looks at them.
You know the DART project is exciting because it’s in the Planetary Defense portion of the NASA website, which sounds like part of a movie with lasers and at least one astronaut tumbling in space.
The DART spacecraft is a box with ion motors kinetic impact with interesting rolling out solar panels, and looks like this:
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The ion engine is particularly interesting, as it is the first application of a propulsion system likely to be used on future spacecraft:
‘The DART spacecraft will NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster – Commercial (NEXT-C)solar drive system as part of the drive in space. NEXT-C is a next-generation system based on the Dawn spacecraft propulsion system, and was developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Using electric propulsion, DART can take advantage of significant flexibility in the mission timeline, while demonstrating next-generation ion engine technology, with applications to potential future NASA missions. ”
The target steroid is an interesting choice because it really is two asteroids. The asteroid is called Didymos, and is a binary asteroid, because it has its own small “moon”, a smaller asteroid orbiting Didymos. This moon is the target of DART.
Using the solar-powered ion engine and advanced autonomous target software, DART will push itself into the moonlight, which will change the speed of the moon’s orbit around Didymos, a change that can be studied by telescopes on Earth word.
Studying the change in orbit can help us figure out how to find a potential Asteroid asteroid that is obviously best to miss our planet, where we not only keep our stuff, but also the Shake Shack known to mankind.
Like a good, modern fight, there will also be a witness who gets the whole thing on video, in this case a small Cubesat that is released before the impact and may or may not upload the footage to World star.
At the end of Vice there is a good interview with the astronomer Andy Rivkin, who gives a good explanation of the DART mission and what he hopes to achieve:
So, yes, take it, asteroid. That little punk moonlet has until November 24 to February 15, 2022 to get his shit together, because it’s the current launch window for DART.