Washington, Nov 24, : , NASA launched Wednesday its Double Asteroid Relocation Test (DART), a spacecraft that will deliberately crash into an asteroids. NASA released a statement saying that the DART mission took off at 1.21 a.m.ET (11.51 a.m.India Time) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
DART is the first mission to test technologies that can prevent an asteroid from causing an impact on Earth.DART will demonstrate the planetary defense technique called kinetic impact.DART’s spacecraft will impact an asteroid at approximately 24,000 km/h and shift its orbit.
The mission will examine whether intentionally crashing a spacecraft into asteroid can change its course, in the event that an Earth-threatening object is discovered in future.
“Asteroid Dimorphos, we’re coming after you!” NASA stated this on Twitter.
It added that “Riding a @SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and our #DARTMission launched at 1:21am EST (06.21 UTC), launching a world-first mission to test asteroid deflecting technology.”
DART’s target asteroids — a binary system of asteroid systems consisting of Didymos, which measures approximately a half-mile in diameter, and its smaller companion, Dimorphos, which measures about 530 feet in circumference.These are not considered a threat to Earth.
The DART spacecraft will be separated from the launch vehicle in September 2022.
This is when Didymos’ moonlet is within 11,000,000 kilometres of Earth.Ground-based telescopes and planet radar will allow observations to measure the momentum transfer to the moonlet.
DART will use an autonomous targeting device to aim at Dimorphos.The spacecraft will travel approximately 4 miles per second and is roughly the same size as a small car.
Telescopes will be placed on Earth to observe the asteroid network and measure the changes in Dimorphos orbit around Didymos.
The Italian Space Agency has created a ride-along CubeSat called LICIACube to observe the impact.
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