Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Flashcards
Why in News?
NASA will launch its first planetary defense test mission named the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).
The DART spacecraft will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Vandenberg Space Force Base (IATA: VBG, ICAO: KVBG, FAA LID: VBG), previously Vandenberg Air Force Base, is a United States Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. Established in 1941, Vandenberg Space Force Base is a space launch base, launching spacecraft from the Western Range, and also performs missile testing. The United States Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 30 serves as the host delta for the base. In addition to its military space launch mission, Vandenberg Space Force Base also performs space launches for civil and commercial space entities, such as NASA and SpaceX.
Key Points
Aim of the Mission:
The mission is to test the new technology to be prepared in case an asteroid heads towards Earth in the future.
The aim is to test the newly developed technology that would allow a spacecraft to crash into an asteroid and change its course.
After the mission has collided with the asteroid, scientists will study its impact on the trajectory of the asteroid with a range of telescopes deployed on different regions of the planet.
DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space.
The target of the spacecraft is a small moonlet called Dimorphos (Greek for “two forms”).
Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos (Greek for “twin”).
It is a suicide mission and the spacecraft will be completely destroyed.
The collision is expected to take place between 26th September and 1st October, 2022.
About the Mission
DART is a low-cost spacecraft.
It has two solar arrays and uses hydrazine propellant for maneuvering the spacecraft.
It also carries about 10 kg of xenon which will be used to demonstrate the agency’s new thrusters called NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster–Commercial (NEXT-C) in space.
NEXT-C gridded ion thruster system provides a combination of performance and spacecraft integration capabilities that make it uniquely suited for deep space robotic missions.
The spacecraft carries a high-resolution imager called Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO).
Images from DRACO will be sent to Earth in real-time and will help study the impact site and surface of Dimorphos (the target asteroid).
DART will also carry a small satellite or CubeSat named LICIACube (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids).
LICIACube is expected to capture images of the impact and the impact crater formed as a result of the collision.
Reason for Choosing Dimorphos:
Didymos is a perfect system for the test mission because it is an eclipsing binary which means it has a moonlet that regularly orbits the asteroid and which can be seen when it passes in front of the main asteroid.
Earth-based telescopes can study this variation in brightness to understand how long it takes Dimorphos to orbit Didymos.
