DART to test Planetary defense at end of month
DART, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, got it’s first view of it’s planned target for September 26th. Didymos, a double asteroid, was photographed in July in anticipation of the upcoming intentional crash. Dimorphos, an orbiting moonlet, is the specific target that will help understand the viability of intentional crashes for planetary defense.
As DART closes in on it’s target, it will do three consecutive burns, and fine tune the trajectory at each interval. After that, DART will autonomously guide itself to its collision with the asteroid moonlet.
This will be the world’s first test of the kinetic impact technique to change the trajectory of an asteroid.
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