![]() $308 million was spent on spacecraft development, $68.8 million for launch services, and $16.5 million is expected to spent on operations and data analysis.įor additional context, read our analysis of NASA's planetary defense budget.īefore it impacted Dimorphos, DART was a relatively small spacecraft. This will allow scientists to analyze DART's impact crater and understand the mission's full effect. Two years after DART's fireworks at Dimorphos, the European Space Agency will launch a mission called Hera to study Didymos and Dimorphos in depth. Additionally, Didymos and Dimorphos do not come close enough to Earth for DART to inadvertently send them hurtling towards our planet. Optical ground-based telescopes see them as a single point of light that fluctuates in brightness as Dimorphos circles Didymos the interval of those fluctuations should have changed after DART's impact. Although they are relatively small - Didymos measures just 780 meters (a half-mile) across and Dimorphos measures only 160 meters (525 feet) across - they pass in front of each other as seen from Earth. The crash changed the time it takes Dimorphos to orbit Didymos by 33 minutes, proving the kinetic impactor technique works.ĭidymos and Dimorphos were particularly well-suited targets for DART. 26, the spacecraft intentionally crashed into the asteroid's small moon, Dimorphos. DART launched in November 2021 and arrived at near-Earth asteroid Didymos in September 2022. This technique works particularly well if used far in advance, since small nudges can add up to big changes later on.ĭART, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, was the first space mission to test this or any other asteroid deflection technique. ![]() ![]() The concept is simple: Slam one or more spacecraft into the asteroid at high speed to change its orbit and move Earth out of the crosshairs. Somewhere in between is the kinetic impactor technique. What should we do if we find a dangerous asteroid on course to hit Earth? There are a number of possible deflection techniques, ranging from extreme (a nuclear blast) to benign (a heavy spacecraft uses gravity to nudge the asteroid off-course). ![]()
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