Double Asteroid Redirection Test: An Asteroid is Successfully Hit by a NASA Spacecraft!

By Rishi Rajput On Sep 27, 2022

The mission tested technologies that could be used in the future to stop an asteroid from hitting Earth.

NASA used the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft to test its capabilities by crashing it into an asteroid on Monday night.

In this case, the size of the asteroid Dimorphos, which NASA says is about the same as a football stadium, does not threaten Earth. But the trip will help scientists test devices that might be able to stop a potentially disastrous asteroid from hitting Earth.

NASA used the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft to test its capabilities by crashing it into an asteroid on Monday night.

How Was the Dart Mission Carried Out?

The plane, about the size of a refrigerator, was sent into space in November on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It flew almost 7 million miles before it hit the ground.

The thing that got hit was Dimorphos, a small asteroid that is the moon of Didymos, a more prominent space rock. It is 525 feet or 160 meters across. The Greek word for “dimorphous” means “having two forms.”

DART will take pictures with the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation. With this equipment, the spacecraft can steer itself right into a collision with the small asteroid Dimorphous.

This will give people their first look at Didymos. At the time of the crash, DART was going 14,000 mph, which is fast enough to cover the last 4 miles in less than a second.

Dimorphous won’t be destroyed by the plane, but the space rock’s flight path is expected to change.

Andy Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (Johns Hopkins APL), which is building the spacecraft and running the mission for NASA, says that asteroid strikes happen when an asteroid’s orbit and Earth’s orbit cross.

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This was said in November to ABC News. So, the point of a kinetic impactor is to give the asteroids a little push so they don’t come near or hit Earth simultaneously.

Rivkin said of asteroid strikes, “This is the one tragedy caused by nature that humans can do something about.” And this is our first attempt to take charge of it and our future in this way.

NASA revealed Webb telescope photos of Jupiter

NASA released two new pictures of Jupiter from the James Webb Space Telescope on Monday. The pictures show the planet’s features in great detail. The near-infrared camera on the telescope took the photos. This camera looks for objects in space by detecting infrared light.

It can look at things like stars, nebulae, and planets that are too far away or too dim to see with the naked eye. It can also look at things seen with the naked eye.

When the first two pictures of Jupiter are put together, they show the giant planet in the Solar System against “the dark background of space,” with swirls of different colors to show how chaotic Jupiter’s atmosphere is.

Jupiter’s Northern and Southern Auroras, at its poles, are shown by the bright orange glows at the top and bottom of the planet.

In the picture, you can also see the well-known Great Red Spot, which NASA says is 1.3 times the size of Earth and can make winds go faster than 250 miles per hour. The area looks white in the picture because it is high up and can reflect sunlight.

According to the space agency, the second picture shows more of Jupiter and its rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet itself.

Jupiter’s moons, Adrastea and Amalthea, can also be seen to the left of the rings. Even though most of the picture is black, there are fuzzy spots in the lower part that are bright but far away galaxies.

Imke de Pater, an emerita professor of astronomy, Earth, and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped lead the observations of Jupiter, said in a statement, “We didn’t expect it to be this good, to be honest.” Amazingly, we can see Jupiter’s rings, tiny satellites, and galaxies in one picture.