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 November launched the ‘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 the planetary defence technique known as kinetic impact. The DART mission was launched on Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, United States. 

DART is the first of its kind mission which will be testing technologies for preventing an impact on Earth by a hazardous asteroid. The DART spacecraft 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 not a threat to the 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”. The 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 autonomous targeting system in order to aim at Dimorphos. 

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

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

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

(IMAGE: NASA)