#DARTmission #PlanetaryDefense
NASA is crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid… on purpose! Our #DARTmission is a first-of-its-kind #PlanetaryDefense test to change the motion of an asteroid in space so that we could use this technique if an asteroid were ever discovered to be a threat to Earth. Follow DART: www.nasa.gov/DART
The DART mission is a test of a technique that could be used to mitigate the threat of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth should one be discovered in the future. DART’s target is not a threat to Earth. While no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, only about 40 percent of those asteroids have been found as of October 2021.
Producer/Editor: Jessica Wilde
Producer: Scott Bednar
Videographers: James Lucas and Seth Robinson
in case there was an asteroid coming
towards Earth and you’re there you can
actually stop it I mean that’s kind of
fantastic NASA is crashing a spacecraft
into an asteroid what you think science
fiction but this is real never in my
life would I have thought I would take a
couple hundred million dollar spacecraft
and crash it into an asterid my name is
Michelle Chen I’m Lena Adams my name is
Kelly fast I’m Andy riffkin I’m Justina
sovats and I help tell the story of the
dart Mission I’m a sary Defender and I
study how the orbits of asteroids change
after we hit them with spacecraft my job
was primarily to make sure all the
systems on the spacecraft work together
the dart mission is NASA’s first test of
a planetary defense technique called
kinetic impactor Dart is the double
asteroid redirection test it’s just a
spacecraft that is going to go and smack
an asteroid the moonlift dioros which
orbits the asteroid dios and see if we
can change its trajectory just a little
bit in order show that we can deflect
incoming asteroids if we need to Dart
will only be changing the period of the
orbit of dioros by a tiny amount but in
space just a little bit is just enough
to make an asteroid actually miss us in
the event that an asteroid is discovered
well ahead of time before it might
impact Earth behind me you see the
spacecraft it’s really cool to see it
coming together in real life it is
fantastic to see it in real life to see
it turn from ideas into real pieces that
are going to go into space the solar
arrays will actually roll out to 28 ft
in length once the solar arrays I deploy
is going to be the size of a school bus
as the solar array opens out it’s going
to swing out in this direction the
asteroid is only two footb fields in
size we’re flying at over 6 km a second
30 days out we see one pixel on our
field of view you can see dios and
dephos is one point of light about 4
hours out our spacecraft becomes
autonomous and then that’s where
everything gets really exciting you
actually are seeing impact we’re super
excited and nervous as well I feel
really honored and humbled to be working
in an area of science that has such a
broader impact you know figuratively and
literally so dark the dinosaurs are made
completely extinct by an asteroid impact
so many years ago here we are we can
actually do something about it I think
this is just wonderful
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