NASA’s DART spacecraft takes aim at an asteroid target

From this distance—about 20 million miles away from DART—the Didymos system is still very faint, and navigation camera experts were uncertain whether DRACO would be able to spot the asteroid yet. However, once the 243 images DRACO took during this observation sequence were combined, the team was able to enhance it to reveal Didymos and pinpoint its location.

This image of the light from asteroid Didymos and its orbiting moonlet Dimorphos is a composite of 243 images taken by the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) aboard DART on July 27, 2022. Credit: NASA JPL DART Navigation Team

“This first set of images is being used as a test to prove our imaging techniques,” said Elena Adams. She is the DART mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “The quality of the image is similar to what we could obtain from ground-based telescopes, but it is important to show that DRACO is working properly and can see its target to make any adjustments needed before we begin using the images to guide the spacecraft into the asteroid autonomously.”

A number of navigation simulations using non-DRACO images of Didymos have already been conducted by the team. However, DART will ultimately depend on its ability to see and process images of Didymos and Dimorphos, once it too can be seen, to guide the spacecraft toward the asteroid, especially in the final four hours before impact. At that point, DART will need to autonomously self-navigate to impact successfully with Dimorphos without any human intervention.

“Once we see the DRACO images from Didymos for the first time, we can iron out the best settings for DRACO and tweak the software,” said Julie Bellerose, the DART navigation director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “In September we will refine what DART is targeting by getting a more accurate fix on the location of Didymos.”

Based on observations made every five hours, the DART team will conduct three trajectory correction maneuvers over the next three weeks. Each of these will further reduce the margin of error for the required spacecraft trajectory to impact. After the last maneuver on September 25, approximately 24 hours before impact, the navigation team will know the position of the target Dimorphos within 2 kilometers (1.2 miles). From there, DART will pilot itself to intercept the asteroid Moonlet. DART will impact Dimorphos at 4 miles (7 kilometers) per second.

DRACO subsequently observed Didymos during scheduled observations on August 12, August 13, and August 22.

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) manages the DART mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office. DART is the world’s first planetary defense test mission, intentionally performing a kinetic impact on Dimorphos to slightly alter its movement in space. While the asteroid poses no threat to Earth, the DART mission will demonstrate that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a kinetic impact with a relatively small asteroid, and prove that this is a viable technique for navigating an asteroid on a collision course with it of the earth, if any is ever discovered. DART will reach its goal on September 26, 2022.