A Test-Case Mission to Save Earth

Recently, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County. The launch provided a fabulous night-time light show for California’s South Coast, and if DART’s mission is successful, we’re in for a show with an even bigger bang this September! What is that mission? To slam into an asteroid at a speed of nearly 15,000 miles per hour.

Why would NASA plan to crash a good spaceship? Two UC-Santa Barbara scientists recently published theoretical papers about what to do should a mountain-sized asteroid be spotted on a collision course with Earth. Potential solutions involved diverting the asteroid or blowing it up. This mission is the next step in verifying their theories.

DART is on a 10-month journey to smash into an asteroid called Dimorphos. Thankfully, Dimorphos is not on an Earth-bound collision course and the deflection is expected to be modest.

Dimorphos orbits a bigger asteroid, Didymos. Both are swinging around the Sun nearly seven million miles away from Earth. The DART collision is expected to nudge Dimorphos into a slightly smaller orbit around Didymos. How will we know if it’s successful? A tiny probe, (LICIACube) developed by the Italian Space Agency, on DART will disengage before the collision and photograph the results. Any change in the Dimorphos orbit should also be detectable via telescopes from Earth.

This experiment will determine if it’s possible to change an asteroid’s trajectory and successfully deflect a big asteroid or comet with planetary-defense technology already at hand. Stay tuned to learn what DART discovers.