Cape Canaveral, Florida – NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test aims to make history Monday at 7:14 p.m. ET when it smashes into Dimorphos, a small asteroid orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. If the impact is successful, it will slightly alter the motion of the asteroid.
It’s a test of deflection technology that could one day be used to protect Earth if a space rock is identified on an impact path with our planet. Currently, there are no asteroids (including Didymus and Demorphos) that are expected to hit our world.
Here’s what to expect on the day of the event.
discipline
Live broadcast will start NASA website Starting at 6 p.m. ET Monday, and running until 7:30 p.m. ET. After that, the space agency will hold a post-event briefing to discuss what happened.
The DART spacecraft carries an imaging device called DRACO, short for Didymos Reconnaissance, and the Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation, which will share a live stream of images as it approaches the double asteroid system. These images will be shared at a rate of one image per second, providing a video-like experience for viewers.
What starts with 1 pixel will eventually become an incredibly detailed look at Dimorphos before you hit it DART.
Humans have never seen Demorphos before because the asteroid system appears only as a single point of light in ground-based telescopes.
In the last hour of approach, Demorphos and Didymus will appear. The stings of light would intensify to reveal two separate celestial bodies. Scientists will finally be able to confirm the shape of Dimorphos, as well as determine whether its surface is rough or smooth.
said Elena Adams, DART mission systems engineer at the DART Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland.
On the broadcast, expect to hear that the team has lost radio contact with DART. The images will continue to appear and display for eight seconds afterward as they travel through space to Earth, said Edward Reynolds, DART project manager at the Applied Physics Laboratory.
Also on the flight is the Italian Space Agency’s Light Asteroid Imaging Vehicle CubeSat, or LICIACube. This briefcase-sized CubeSat took a flight with DART into space and separated from the spacecraft on 9/11.
On the CubeSat there are two cameras called LUKE (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer) and LEIA (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid). Together, they will collect images and help guide LICIACube on its journey.
The small satellite travels a safe distance behind the DART to record what is happening.
Three minutes after the collision, LICIACube will fly close to Dimorphos to take photos and videos of the impact plume as it sprays from the asteroid and possibly even spy on the crater it could leave behind. The small satellite will also glimpse the opposite hemisphere of Dimorphos, which DART will not be able to see before it is obliterated.
The CubeSat will turn to keep its cameras pointed at the Dimorphos as they fly. After days, weeks and months, we will see photos and videos taken by the Italian satelliteR that noticed the collision.
The first images projected from LICIACube can show the moment of the impact and the shaft it makes.
After the fact
While the engineering team expects to celebrate a successful impact, astronomers will know it’s time to start working, said Tom Statler, NASA DART program scientist. Ground-based observatories around the world will monitor the asteroid system as a way to confirm whether DART has succeeded in altering the asteroid’s motion.
It will also observe the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Lucy mission. The images they collect can reveal the overall brightness of the entire asteroid system, Statler said, indicating how much dust and debris the impact caused.
Astronomers will use telescopes on Earth to compare past observations of the system with those they collected after the event.
Currently, it takes Demorphos 11 hours 55 minutes to complete one orbit around Didymus. After the DART effect, this can shrink for 10 minutes – something that can be measured by telescopes on Earth – and eventually shows if DART was successful.
And don’t expect to see the last asteroid system in 2022.
To clear the fallout from the collision, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will launch in 2024, and we can expect more dramatic images of the consequences after that.
The spacecraft, with two CubeSats, will reach the asteroid system in 2026, about four years after DART completed its mission. Once there, HERA will study both asteroids, measure the physical properties of Demorphos, examine the DART impact crater and the Moon’s orbit, while continuing with the overall goal of creating an effective planetary defense strategy.
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