NASA’s DART Spacecraft sets target on Asteroid Target

DART is the world’s first planetary defense test mission

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft procured its first image of the double-asteroid system Didymos, which includes its target, Dimorphos. DART will deliberately crash into Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet of Didymos, on September 26. The asteroid as such poses no threat to Earth; this is humanity’s first test of the kinetic impact technique, which uses a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid for planetary defense.

Once the 243 images DRACO took during the observation sequence are combined, the team could enhance it to locate Didymos and find its location. “This first set of images is being used to test the imaging techniques,” said Elena Adams. Elena Adams is the DART mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “The quality of the image is similar to what we can obtain from the ground-based telescopes, but it is crucial to show that DRACO is functional and can see its target to make any changes which are needed before we begin using the images to guide the spacecraft into the asteroid autonomously.” DART is the world’s first planetary defense test mission, intentionally executing a kinetic impact into Dimorphos to slightly change its motion in space.