Remember the hollywood film Armageddon, in which a ragtag bunch of amateur astronauts set out on a mission to divert an asteroid destined for Earth? nasa is nearing the end of a comparable operation, although it will not include astronauts. As the launch window opens in November, nasa will begin the countdown for its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. The DART mission will target an asteroid as engineers and scientists attempt to build a defensive system able to deflect dangerous asteroids headed towards Earth.

The Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) that DART is aiming for was identified nearly two decades ago, and astronomers discovered that it has a moon. The binary system was given the Greek name "Didymos," which means "twins." nasa picked the moon as the target of their impact mission after confirming its orbit and naming it 'Dimorphos.'


Nasa's Solar System Exploration Program is in charge of DART, which will achieve kinetic impact deflection by smashing into the moonlet (asteroid's moon) at a speed of roughly 6.6 kilometres per second. Nasa's DART mission will launch from Vandenberg air Force Base in california on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and will travel through space for a year before arriving at the target asteroid. The spaceship will be equipped with a set of onboard cameras as well as advanced autonomous navigation algorithms to monitor the situation. Engineers hope that the impact will affect the speed of the moonlet in its orbit around the parent body by a fraction of a per cent.

The Disruptive Asteroid Rendezvous and Impact Test (DART) is the initial stage in evaluating technologies for asteroid deflection that are potentially dangerous. The collision is planned for late september 2022, when the Didymos system will be within 11 million kilometres of Earth, allowing ground-based observatories and planetary radars to see it. "We are thrilled to be collaborating with our Italian and european colleagues on potentially dangerous asteroids," Andrea Riley, DART programme executive, adds.


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