![]() ![]() “The DART team overcame the technical, logistical and personal challenges of a global pandemic to deliver this spacecraft to the launch pad, and I’m confident that its next step - actually deflecting an asteroid - will be just as successful,” said Mike Ryschkewitsch, head of APL’s Space Exploration Sector. ![]() They will power both the spacecraft and NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster – Commercial (NEXT-C) ion engine, one of several technologies being tested on DART for future application on space missions. Almost two hours later, the spacecraft successfully unfurled its two 28-foot-long roll-out solar arrays. Minutes later, mission operators at APL received the first spacecraft telemetry data and started the process of orienting the spacecraft to a safe position for deploying its solar arrays. EST, DART separated from the second stage of its launch vehicle. Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Craig WeimanĪt 2:17 a.m. He watched the launch from the Mission Operations Center at APL’s Laurel, Maryland, campus. Cheng was the individual who came up with the idea of DART. It’s a method called kinetic impact, and the test will provide important data to help humankind better prepare for an asteroid that might post an impact hazard to Earth, should one ever be discovered.Īndy Cheng, a Johns Hopkins APL planetary scientist and one of the DART investigation leads, reacts after the successful launch of the DART spacecraft. DART will show that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it. EST from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.Īs just one part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy, DART will send a spacecraft to impact a known asteroid that is not a threat to Earth, to slightly change its motion in a way that can be accurately measured via ground-based telescopic observations. The spacecraft launched Wednesday morning at 1:21 a.m. Lighting up the California coastline early in the morning of November 24, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft off the planet to begin its one-way trip to crash into an asteroid.ĭART - a mission designed, developed, and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office - is the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending the planet against potential asteroid or comet hazards. Riding atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, DART took off Wednesday, November 24, from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft sets off to collide with an asteroid in the world’s first full-scale planetary defense test mission. ![]()
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