{"id":24481,"date":"2021-11-23T20:09:08","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T12:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=24481"},"modified":"2021-11-23T21:27:20","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T13:27:20","slug":"the-dart-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=24481","title":{"rendered":"The DART mission"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two years ago I published a detailed blog post: Will an asteroid hit Earth?<\/a> In that post I discussed the scenario that an asteroid had been discovered on a collision course with Earth and what could be done to avoid such a possibly catastrophic collision. One option is to send a spacecraft to the asteroid and let it crash with it. The impact should change the course of the asteroid, so it would no longer hit Earth.. The DART<\/a> mission will test the feasibility of this “kinetic impactor” technique. DART will be launched on 24 November, so it is time for an update.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The acronym DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test. Target for DART is the minor asteroid Didymos<\/a>, discovered in 1996. It has a diameter of 780 meter and orbits the sun in 2.11 year. In 2003 it was discovered that Didymos has a small moon with a diameter of 160 meter. This moon has been named Dimorphos<\/a> , it orbits Didymos in about 12 hour at a distance of 1.2 km. DART will crash into this moon at a speed of 6.6 km\/s. and change its orbit slightly. In the infographic this change is hugely exaggerated. It is estimated that the crash will change the speed of Dimorphos only about 0,4 mm\/s and its orbital period about 10 minutes<\/p>\n\n\n\n