When and where you can be there live as NASA intentionally crashes a spacecraft into an asteroid for the first time

Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube … [+] Effects on the Didymos binary system.

NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

On Monday, September 26, 2022, NASA will intentionally crash one of its own spacecraft into an asteroid.

The ambitious DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission is the first-ever mission to test technology to protect the Earth from possible asteroid and comet impacts and will actually hit Dimorphos, a small moon of the asteroid Didymos.

Didymos and Dimorphos are not on an Earth-based trajectory, but they came close to Earth in 2003, and occasionally it comes close to Mars as well.

The landmark event will take place on Monday, September 26, 2022 at exactly 7:14 p.m. EDT, with live coverage beginning at 6:00 p.m. EDT on NASA TV on the agency’s website and on Facebook. Twitter and YouTube.

Here’s everything you need to know about the daring DART mission and what will happen after impact:

What is DART?

It is the first planetary defense mission. His goal is to see if it’s possible to change the trajectory of a potentially dangerous object in space by bumping into it. The aftermath of the 500 kg DART spacecraft’s kinetic impact on Dimorphos will be studied both immediately and over many years to see if it’s a viable solution should a truly threatening object come our way.

What are Didymos and Dimorphos?

It’s two near-Earth asteroids orbiting each other, which is not unusual. The larger of the two bodies in this binary system is Didymos, at 2,560 feet/780 meters in diameter, and the smaller Dimorphos, at 530 feet/160 meters (also called “Didymoon”), orbiting Didymos.

Didymos and Dimorphos have a two-year orbit around the Sun that is slightly inclined to those of the planets and also slightly eccentric. They can be found just past Earth to just past Mars.

When DART reaches them, Didymos and Dimorphos will be approximately 6.8 million miles/11 million kilometers from Earth.

This image of the light from the asteroid Didymos and its orbiting moon Dimorphos is a composite of … [+] 243 images acquired by the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO) on July 27, 2022.

NASA JPL DART Navigation Team

What will DART do?

The idea is that by creating a “kinetic deflection” on Dimorphos, the trajectory of both objects will be slightly altered.

DART will impact Dimorphos at about 15,000 mph and hopefully change its orbital velocity by 0.4mm/s, which in turn will slightly alter Didymos’ trajectory. If all goes according to plan, the time it takes for the smaller asteroid to orbit Didymos will shift by a few minutes.

A simulation released in December 2021 Icarus Journal showed that DART can “excite” the spin of the moon Dimorphos and cause “chaotic tumbling” to achieve the hoped-for orbit change.

On the night of July 7, 2022, the Lowell Discovery Telescope near Flagstaff, Arizona captured this … [+] Sequence in which the asteroid Didymos, located near the center of the screen, moves across the night sky. The sequence is accelerated by about 900 times. Scientists used these and other observations from the July campaign to confirm Dimorphos’ orbit and expected location at the time of DART’s impact.

Lowell Observatory/N. Moskowitz

Does DART work?

The DART investigative team has highly detailed computer simulations of kinetic asteroid impacts, but they have no direct evidence of what would actually happen. So a lot of time has been spent getting to know the binary asteroids in detail.

“The before-and-after nature of this experiment requires excellent knowledge of the asteroid system before we do anything about it,” said Nick Moskovitz, an astronomer at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona and co-leader of an observing campaign conducted in July 2022. “We don’t want to get into saying at the last minute, ‘Oh, here’s something we didn’t think of, or phenomena we didn’t think of.’ We want to be sure that any change we see is solely due to what DART has done.”

In October, a series of ground-based telescopes around the world will be used to calculate Dimorphos’ new orbit. “Thanks to the global effort to observe this system from ground-based telescopes, we know what it looks like before the impact,” Moskovitz said. “After impact, we’ll use some of the same techniques to determine how much Dimorphos moved and ultimately how successful we were.”

However, another space agency is sending another spacecraft for double checking.

What is “Hera”?

The European Space Agency’s follow-up mission Hera – due to launch in 2024 and arrive in early January 2027 – is an asteroid rendezvous spacecraft designed to see if DART works.

Hera will examine both Didymos and Dimorphos closely using lasers, a star tracker, a thermal imaging camera, and accelerometers. It will see if the impact crater left by DART on Dimorphos (which it will reach to within 200 meters) has changed Didymos’ trajectory.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launches with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft … [+] aboard, Tuesday, November 23, 2021, Pacific Time (November 24 Eastern Time) from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. DART is the world’s first large-scale planetary defense test demonstrating a method of asteroid deflection technology. The mission was built and managed by Johns Hopkins APL for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Photo credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

(NASA/Bill Ingalls)

When was DART introduced?

DART launched on Wednesday, November 24, 2021 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The launch was originally scheduled for July 21, 2021, but was delayed due to supply chain issues from COVID-19 and some technical challenges.

I wish you clear skies and big eyes.

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