NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defence technology demonstration – successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space.
Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, U.S.A announced the successful impact at 7:14 p.m. EDT.
As a part of NASA’s overall planetary defence strategy, DART’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered.
“At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defense, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
“As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth.”
Should I start an 'Earth Defence Journal'? NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test – the world’s first planetary defence test – successfully impacted its asteroid target Dimorphos on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space. pic.twitter.com/5vWLqPDDMI
— George Allison (@geoallison) September 27, 2022
DART targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 530 feet (160 metres) in diameter. It orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-metre) asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth.
“The mission’s one-way trip confirmed NASA can successfully navigate a spacecraft to intentionally collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact. The investigation team will now observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that DART’s impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos. Researchers expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1%, or roughly 10 minutes; precisely measuring how much the asteroid was deflected is one of the primary purposes of the full-scale test.”
“Planetary Defense is a globally unifying effort that affects everyone living on Earth,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“Now we know we can aim a spacecraft with the precision needed to impact even a small body in space. Just a small change in its speed is all we need to make a significant difference in the path an asteroid travels.”
The spacecraft’s sole instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), together with a sophisticated guidance, navigation and control system that works in tandem with Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav) algorithms, enabled DART to identify and distinguish between the two asteroids, targeting the smaller body.
“These systems guided the 1,260-pound (570-kilogram) box-shaped spacecraft through the final 56,000 miles (90,000 kilometres) of space into Dimorphos, intentionally crashing into it at roughly 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometres) per hour to slightly slow the asteroid’s orbital speed. DRACO’s final images, obtained by the spacecraft seconds before impact, revealed the surface of Dimorphos in close-up detail.
Fifteen days before impact, DART’s CubeSat companion Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), provided by the Italian Space Agency, deployed from the spacecraft to capture images of DART’s impact and of the asteroid’s resulting cloud of ejected matter. In tandem with the images returned by DRACO, LICIACube’s images are intended to provide a view of the collision’s effects to help researchers better characterize the effectiveness of kinetic impact in deflecting an asteroid. Because LICIACube doesn’t carry a large antenna, images will be downlinked to Earth one by one in the coming weeks.”
“DART’s success provides a significant addition to the essential toolbox we must have to protect Earth from a devastating impact by an asteroid,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer.
“This demonstrates we are no longer powerless to prevent this type of natural disaster. Coupled with enhanced capabilities to accelerate finding the remaining hazardous asteroid population by our next Planetary Defense mission, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, a DART successor could provide what we need to save the day.”
With the asteroid pair within 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) of Earth, a global team is using dozens of telescopes stationed around the world and in space to observe the asteroid system. Over the coming weeks, they will characterize the ejecta produced and precisely measure Dimorphos’ orbital change to determine how effectively DART deflected the asteroid.
NASA add that the results will help validate and improve scientific computer models critical to predicting the effectiveness of this technique as a reliable method for asteroid deflection.
Not sure just hitting it counts as sucessful, have to wait and see if they have actually managed to alter it’s orbit.
Then will be case of can we
a:) detect the next next possible ELE early enough,
b:) build rocket that can loft a payload heavy enough to change course of something weighing possibly billions of tonnes?
Current theoretical max is Starship about 100T which would be like shooting a bb gun at an A380 and wondering why it didn’t change course.
Or launch several components into space over several missions & assemble there a vehicle large enough to do the job.
Colliding with an object is low kinetic effect and useful if the object is detected far enough away so as a small deflect results in a huge miss when it reaches earth. The fact a spacecraft can be directed to an object far from earth open s up the possibility of larger kinetic effects.
I agree, hence point about detecting far enough away to be able to organise response. the new space age we are in with SPACEX and others providing capability to launch frequently will make things easier, i think we need to develop a space craft that has adaptable docking mount so we can have a fleet that can be put atop Falcon9, Arrianne, Atlas5, DeltaIV, Long March even Soyuz (even the Orc couldn’t ignore a planet killer) so we could send stream of impacts to keep nudging the trajectory think that might be better than trying 1 big hit but must… Read more »
I’d agree, certainly don’t want to be cobbling something together last minute when it comes to this.
Sort of depends how much delta V you have that’s not used up getting out of the gravity field your in as well as how much time and space you have to use gravity assist. If you have the delta v and gravity assist to get a lot of velocity, your dumping a huge amount of kinetic energy.
Precisely, Steve M. Altering the orbit was the objective. That is what measures success.
yep, IF they managed it, won’t know for few days/weeks
This is where we really need the moon, so much easier to launch a large payload with fuel left for greater delta V and not just fighting gravity. As you say with good detection and giving time to using gravity assist from the earth with plenty of delta V you could actually creat serous levels of kinetic energy, it’s not mass thats king it’s velocity.
Why would you put it on the moon? Gravity wells are for suckers. If you’re already basing a planetary defence system off planet, you might as well have them based on an orbital facility. Easier to maintain (no landing on moon needed), easier to launch, cheaper to get up there in the first place, and no moon dust to coat everything in.
*edit* Also easier to construct artificial gravity in orbit than on the moon if you absolutely need long term habitation on the facility.
Mainly because you can make fuel on the moon so it acts as the perfect place. Unfortunately you have to pick your gravity well when it comes to making hydrogen and oxygen, even if you have your launch facility off the moon you are still having to carry all that fuel out of the the gravity well. The other big is people and wellbeing, space is essentially killing every Astronaut both from microgravity and radiation, that 20% of earth gravity makes a considerable difference physiological compared to microgravity ( and yes one day we may be able to create artificial… Read more »
An orbital defence facility would almost certainly not be permanently manned, which is why I added artificial gravity as an after thought. But assuming it would be, the idea that you’d build an entire manufacturing facility on the moon to support, what? One or two launch platforms to engage a once in a million years asteroid heading towards earth? A bit overkill.
FYI there is plenty you can do about radiation outside a gravity well. Like you said; you just bury it in rock, and there is no shortage of rock outside of massive gravity wells out there.
Well the moon is not going to be about defence against rocks , we are going their anyway, It is literally step one before mars. Having fuel production on the moon is literally the gateway to the rest of the solar system, SOFIA confirming the presence of large water ice caps in 2020 ( after the first hints from 2008 onward) completely changes the dynamic of future space exploration and exploitation, turning the moon from interesting to fundamental and the future of both manned bases and regularise launches from the moon inevitable and required. so like in everything the wise… Read more »
It would depend on how far away the object was detected. If like Didymos and Dimorphos which took over a year to get to the interception point. It would be worth using a combination of chemical rocket and ion drive. Using the chemical rocket to begin the acceleration. Then leaving the minuscule ion drive, to accelerate it further over the following days and months. This would allow the “interceptor” to build up a significant speed, significantly faster than DARTs 14,000mph.
Generally the larger objects are mapped so we should know early.
yes a lot faster, if you had a year or so you could maximise the large amount of delta V from an ion engine as well as gravity assist. The fastest space craft so far got to a speed of 330,000 mph but you can get to around 550,000 using an ion engine and gravity assist.
if you had a 550kg object travelling at 330,000mph that around 1.5kt of direct energy at 555,000 your looking at 10+kts of direct energy.
I’d position it at a Legrange Point, to minimise fuel required to keep position. At that distance it would have to be unmanned, but there’s no need for such a platform to be.
Hit it early enough and it doesn’t really matter. Even a slight alteration far out results in a miss when it reaches earth.
Exactly. Might be useful for NASA to finally fund the program (satellite based) to identify all potential planetary killers. Current estimate from earth based observatories: 40%. Delayed a further two years due to funding shortfall. Program still won’t be terribly useful if a supernova or black hole passes through the neighborhood. Oh well…
BTW: NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer?!? Could Starfleet be far behind? Mr. Scott, Warp Factor 6, shields up, phasers on full, photon torpedo salvo at the ready! 🙄. Sorry NASA, wrong century’s technology.
Take that you alien *******s!!!!
Anyway- the challenging aspect is that the effect on the asteroid’s orbit depends on whether it’s a solid rock or an aggregation of rubble- which we didn’t know prior to hitting it with a Cubesat to see what falls off. The characteristics of most of the other threatening NEOs are similarly unknown at present.
All I could think of is Alan Partridge saying it like this
https://youtu.be/yGOvW9Jn0tE?t=7
Haha! Good stuff.
Precisely. 😳😁
In 20 years…scientists report that an asteroid impacted by the 2022 DART test was in-fact nudged into an intercept course with the earth. NASA spokespersons says “Sorry whoopsy”.
😂
I’m think butterfly effect, itscourse alters, it passed closer to another object which its gravity effects, changing that objects course, which collides with another etc… you get the idea 🙂
“Dont look up”
Or, perhaps, NASA spokesperson may be more staightforward in the assessment: Sorry, folks, we f****d up. Royally.”
“We are no longer powerless (to save the world from an extinction event size meteor). Is this being talked up a bit?.
Just for instance, what thrust would detonating a nuke on the surface produce? …Presuming you could detonate one at 14,000 mph or rendezvous with the object and plant one a bit slower.
I wonder what other plans exist for this scenario.
AA
No ICBM Currently fielded can escape earths gravity, just not enough thrust on board. So already it would then need to be delivered by a different system. One of the key points of DART was its autonomous navigation package as we cannot ‘steer’ manually at those ranges due to signal transmission times, that would need loading on to the same delivery system and trials period. 1 of the many reasons NASA chose a Kinetic impact over explosive was due to the likelihood of accidentally creating a massive debris field that maintained course over a larger area instead of changing the… Read more »
The thing is kinetic impactor is the way you want to go anyway as explosive energy in space is not effective, unless your using a method to direct the energy at a target as there are to few molecules in space to propagate an energy wave.
They don’t. Several useful technologies where scrapped by 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which, amongst other things banned nuclear weapons in space. (most famously Project Orion which was a plan to use Nuclear Bombs as a propulsion device for spacecraft).
Even better, deflect one on a trajectory to Moscow. Not too big a rock though, just enough to erase that hell hole.
That would be unprecedented sabotage though.
Just like the damn Ruskies are doing to NS2 and the Baltic sea now. They literally have gas to pump away into the sea just to cause a distraction or to point the finger at NATO.
Just madness.
Here’s an idea for super twat Putin. Try making peace with your neighbours. Withdraw ftom the democratic sovereign country called Ukraine and make war reparations.
Never going to happen but if enough people say it maybe some sort of reason will eventually sink in.
Come on that’s far too sensible. Stop attacking a peaceful country? But what about the nazis? What about the super duper pigeons the Americans were paying to modify to poop out toxic birth control germs and wipe out all Russians!
You know the Russian saying when your in a hole, get the biggest excavator and dig faster🙈
You’re correct Mr Bell, three separate explosions detected by Swedish and Danish authorities, the largest was 3.2. That means it has to be a sea mine.
Theyve sabotaged their own pipeline. No coincidence that units of the Baltic fleet were observed just a few days before exercising in the area. Delayed charge explosive planted. This should be our wake up call. Everytime those Ruskies deploy vessels through NATO territory they need to be watched for subsurface activity and if found to be deploying any subsurface munitions then engaged and sunk. I think our pipelines, gas, electricity interconnectors and internet connections are very much at risk. Pity weve only got 6 SSNs operational and only 9 Poseidon MPAs. We could really use double that number right about… Read more »
‘You can tell it’s real cos it looks so fake” – Elon Musk
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🇬🇧😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
🏴🇬🇧
It was basically a massive kinetic impactor. Travelling at a closing velocity of 15,000 MPH. Even a stick would leave a dent at that speed.
Impressive.
I watched this live on the Internet. Amazing, I was laying in bed, watching a spacecraft targetted on an object millions of miles away and I could make out individual rocks in its terminal phase. Bloody remarkable!
Mean while back on planet earth the tories are planning on spending more than they ridiculed corbyn for planning just a couple of years ago🙈
Strange times we live in.
A guy on the tv from a wholesalers used a toaster as an example. 2 days ago he paid £9 and would sell it for £20. Now it will cost £14 and he will need to sell it for £25.
I don’t know what to make of it or how it can be sorted. We could be seeing a very short term truss government. The back benches are rumbling already🙈
Hats off to the people at the JH APL! A direct hit of a moving object 100s of millions of miles from earth.
What is really fun is the impact energy of this wee box was the equivalent of 2.6 tons of tnt. That’s a lot of energy really. If you could double the velocity you would be at 10.5 tons of TNT equivalent…although it’s not really equivalent as all the energy was directed into the astroid…11,160,000ish kilojoules..dumped into the Astroid..where as we all know an explosion wastes energy everywhere and in vacuum with no atmosphere to propagate a blast wave…it’s rubbish….so kinetic energy wins all the way….. To put it in perspective it’s the same kinetic energy dump as crashing about 102… Read more »
One reason why no space ship will ever be considered “unarmed” as all it needs to do is release a rod at the speeds spaceships travel and it’ll obliterate anything that Sir Isaac Newton (the deadliest son of a bitch in space) guides it towards.
Once you release that hunk of metal it’ll keep going until it hits something, it can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into outer space, and hit somebody else in 10,000 years. If you release that scrap, it’ll ruin someones day, somewhere at sometime.
I guess that is another reason why Fylingdales and the other stations of NORAD track thousands of space objects, even small ones. They’re a menace to satellites with that velocity when in orbit.
It puts in to perspective the terminal velocity of ASRAAM versus CAMM. ASRAAM has the advantage of using the carrier aircraft’s kinetic energy to add to its own. But you also have to bare in mind the size of the rocket motor compared to something like Sidewinder or IRIS-T that use smaller rocket motors.
It love the fact that it’s publicized speed is greater than Mach3, which is what the other two missiles claim. Hmm, I wonder if us actually a tad faster…..,?
Pretty much all of you are picking up the same problem I had with the headline of this article. Hitting the asteroid is partial success, deflecting the orbit by the targeted amount is full success. Still, impressive to hit it and this is not our full capability even with launch vehicles currently in service. This impactor was launched by a Falcon 9, a Falcon 9 Heavy could already put up more mass. Also, looking only a year or two into the future, as already mentioned Starship is (I hope) going to demonstrate orbital lift capability within the next 6 months… Read more »
The asteroid has just announced it wishes to be a part of Russia following an unprovoked attack on it by the US.
What else do you expect from a dumb rock?
Turns out that the asteroid was FFBNW mk 41 silos and CIWS. A lesson surely….😉
Shit did nasa check if it was a member of NATO…or the league of zoggy…that would have been embarrassing, crashing into an Astroid listen post for an intergalactic super power…..please don’t obliterate the planet it was an accident honest….
😂😁
I’m just curious since this is the UK defense journal site. What did the UK have to do with anything involved here at all?
Sir, surely you jest! Have you no memories of the gallant Lt. Cdr. Montgomery Scott, the doughty Scottish Chief Engineer of the Starship Enterprise? Mere errant and destructive planetary bodies were never a match for the indomitable Scotsman! This test is mere child’s play in comparison to the trials ahead as we explore the galaxy in the 24th century! 😉
The UK is part of Planet Earth’s community. It is of interest to us if anyone can deflect an asteroid that might otherwise wipe us all out.
Sigh! Any excuse for a sad, little dig!
😁
All I can add is: “Where’s Bruce Willis”? 😎
So, if these Hypersonic Cruise Missiles are to be believed, one of those launched from a space station, could take out any asteroid, anytime, anywhere?