NASA blasts DART Mission off to shoot rocket into asteroid to alter its orbit | WATCH

NASA at 1:21 ET (11:50 AM) on Wednesday, 24 vember launched ‘DART mission’ which is nearly a one-year journey to crash into an asteroid. DART which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test is a proof-of-concept experiment that will demonstrate planetary defence technique kwn as kinetic impact. DART mission was launched on Elon Musk’s X Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Force Base in California, United States. 

DART is first of its kind mission which will be testing techlogies for preventing an impact on Earth by a hazardous asteroid. DART craft is specially designed to slam into an asteroid and shift its orbit taking a critical step in demonstrating ways to protect our planet from a potentially hazardous impact. DART’s target asteroid is t a threat to Earth, NASA has said. 

More about DART mission

DART will slam into a binary asteroid system consisting of Didymos which is a Greek word for “twin”. target is a half-mile across and its smaller companion is called Dimorphos which is a Greek word for “two forms” and is 530 feet across. DART will be using an automous targeting system in order to aim at Dimorphos. 

craft is roughly size of a small car and it will strike smaller body at a speed of around 4 miles per second. NASA, in an official statement, explained that telescopes on Earth will observe asteroid system while measuring change in Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos. It is also pertinent to te that Italian ncy-built ride-along on DART, called LICIACube will separate from DART before impact to observe collision.

As per NASA’s official website, key objectives of DART Mission are following:

• Demonstrate a kinetic impact with Dimorphos.
• Change binary orbital period of Dimorphos.
• Use ground-based telescope observations to measure Dimorphos’ period change before and after impact.
• Measure effects of impact and resulting ejecta on Dimorphos.

(IM: NASA)