asteroids, dart mission, nasa
What would we do if we spotted a hazardous asteroid on a collision course with Earth? Could we deflect it safely to prevent the impact? Last year, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission tried to find out whether a “kinetic impactor” could do the job: smashing a 600 kg spacecraft the size of a ...
Since NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft intentionally slammed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos on Sept. 26 — altering its orbit by 33 minutes — the investigation team has been digging into the implications of how this planetary defense technique could be used in the future, if such a need should ever arise. This has included further analysis ...
As NASA prepares to usher in a new form of planetary defense, one Johns Hopkins engineer will be eagerly awaiting the big collision with an asteroid that she is helping orchestrate. Elena Adams, the mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and her team will spend the next two weeks carefully observing Didymos, ...
Asteroids can pose a threat to life on Earth, but they are also a valuable source of resources to make fuel or water to aid deep space exploration. Devoid of geological and atmospheric processes, these space rocks provide a window into the evolution of the solar system. But to really understand their secrets, scientists must ...