NASA

2022 - 9 - 26

Post cover — Image courtesy of "Christian Science Monitor"

Target practice in space: NASA aims to knock an asteroid off course (Christian Science Monitor)

It's innovation in the name of planetary defense: NASA's DART mission aims to test the idea of colliding with an asteroid to deflect it from Earth.

“A huge piece of what the DART piece is demonstrating is, do we have what it takes to autonomously navigate our spacecraft to autonomously crash into this small body?” says mission scientist Mallory DeCoster, who will help investigate the impact. “We do things because they’re hard,” says DART Program Manager Ed Reynolds, who is thrilled the efforts are finally coming to fruition. “And I think that took quite a long time and quite a lot of development of workflow and information flow.” “We can’t have humans operating a joystick because things are happening so fast, so the spacecraft has to make its own decisions.” The core of the DART probe is about the size of a refrigerator. A second challenge is the collision’s physics: changing the course of a large object with a much smaller one. We are changing the motion of a natural celestial body in space. There’s the physical computer simulations of the impact. While the goal is straightforward, the road to Monday was no simple one. “We have collided with things before, but not with the intent of moving them,” says Thomas Statler, DART program manager at NASA. The public can join scientists in a long-distance viewing of the collision tonight (at 7:14 p.m. If the space agency can successfully nudge Dimorphos onto a new track, it can learn crucial lessons about how to defend Earth if a more dire situation were to occur.

NASA slams spacecraft into asteroid in unprecedented test | CBC ... (CBC.ca)

A NASA spacecraft slammed into an asteroid at blistering speed Monday in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth.

Finding and tracking asteroids, "That's still the name of the game here. Energy Department, promises to revolutionize the field of asteroid discovery, Lu said. Significantly fewer than half of the estimated 25,000 near-Earth objects in the deadly 140-metre range have been discovered, according to NASA. Within minutes, Dimorphos was alone in the pictures; it looked like a giant grey lemon, but with boulders and rubble on the surface. Scientists expected the impact to carve out a crater, hurl streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, alter the asteroid's orbit. "No, this is not a movie plot," NASA administrator Bill Nelson tweeted earlier in the day.

Google celebrates NASA's DART mission with a new search gimmick (NPR)

Tech giant Google took it upon itself to launch its own type of celebration following NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission successfully ...

The company's Google Doodles on Google.com frequently feature historical figures or events on anniversaries. Neither of the asteroids, which are located about 7 million miles away, pose any threat to Earth. If you Google "NASA DART" or "NASA DART mission" it will trigger an animation featuring a spacecraft hitting the "News" tab and knocking your search results off-kilter.

Watch the moment NASA rammed a spacecraft into an asteroid (CTV News)

A high-speed NASA spacecraft veered toward an asteroid on Monday – and rammed into the rock deliberately.

ski climber a day after she fell off near the peak of the world's eighth-highest mountain. The 121-year-old legislation, which permits abortion solely to save the life of the mom, is one of the measures coming back into effect in the U.S. [Health](https://www.ctvnews.ca/health) [Biden's strategy to end hunger in U.S. [S&P/TSX composite up more than 100 points, U.S. And, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is making plans to visit the regions impacted 'as soon as possible this week.' The minister was diagnosed with an aggressive blood cancer called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2019. [World](https://www.ctvnews.ca/world) [Iranians are risking it all to protest. A new poll suggests one in three Canadians have been keeping close tabs on the Jan. Catharines following a hazardous incident in the community on Tuesday, Niagara Health confirms. An American who returned to U.S. [ video at the top of this article](https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2530138&playlistId=1.6083336&binId=1.810401&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1). parking garage just weeks before she disappeared in January.

NASA to Provide Media Update on Artemis I Rollback (NASA)

NASA will host a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Sept. 27, to discuss the agency's decision to roll the Artemis I Space Launch System rocket and ...

This is what NASA's spacecraft saw just seconds before slamming ... (NPR)

It's the high point of a NASA project known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, aka DART, which started some $300 million and seven years ago. The craft ...

[The dramatic series](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1574539270987173903?s=20&t=STv37mPgMsVUfvuscEyHxg) shows the asteroid gradually filling the frame, moving from a faraway mass floating in the darkness to offering an up-close and personal view of its rocky surface. Because it doesn't carry a large antenna, it adds, those images will be downlined to Earth "one by one in the coming weeks." Nonetheless, NASA officials [have hailed the mission ](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-dart-mission-hits-asteroid-in-first-ever-planetary-defense-test)as an unprecedented success. "DART's success provides a significant addition to the essential toolbox we must have to protect Earth from a devastating impact by an asteroid," Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defense officer, said in a statement. 2021 on a one-way mission to test the viability of kinetic impact: In other words, can NASA navigate a spacecraft to hit a (hypothetically Earth-bound) asteroid and deflect it off course? It's the high point of a NASA project known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, aka DART, which started some $300 million and seven years ago.

NASA's DART Spacecraft Smashes Into an Asteroid—on Purpose (WIRED)

The mission was designed to test whether a probe could knock a hazardous space rock away from a crash course with Earth.

[the agency has detected](https://www.wired.com/2009/08/neoreport/) and tracked almost all of the really huge near-Earth objects. “It went from a collection of individual pixels, and now you can see the shape and shading and texture of Didymos, and you can see the same thing with Dimorophos as we get closer and closer. Dimorphos is on the small side, spanning 525 feet—which is about the size of the Great Pyramid. The last shots from the craft’s camera revealed Didymos to be a slightly egg-shaped rock, littered with boulders and pockmarked with craters. NASA scientists believe that the asteroid got dented but didn’t entirely break up, and they expect that the impact may have slightly shortened its orbit around Didymos. It’s just a test, an effort to determine whether an asteroid can be nudged off its course—a strategy that could be used to divert a near-Earth object on a collision course with us if it’s spotted well enough in advance.

Bam! NASA spacecraft crashes into asteroid in defense test (Saanich News)

Scientists expected the impact to carve out a crater, hurl streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, alter the asteroid's orbit. “We have ...

Finding and tracking asteroids, “That’s still the name of the game here. Energy Department, promises to revolutionize the field of asteroid discovery, Lu noted. Significantly less than half of the estimated 25,000 near-Earth objects in the deadly 460-foot (140-meter) range have been discovered, according to NASA. Scientists expected the impact to carve out a crater, hurl streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, alter the asteroid’s orbit. Planetary defense experts prefer nudging a threatening asteroid or comet out of the way, given enough lead time, rather than blowing it up and creating multiple pieces that could rain down on Earth. Within minutes, Dimorphos was alone in the pictures; it looked like a giant gray lemon, but with boulders and rubble on the surface.

First images show aftermath of NASA's DART asteroid collision ... (New Scientist)

As NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into an asteroid, a small satellite called LICIACube watched from afar – now it has sent back its first images of the ...

This was key to both figuring out how the collision affected the asteroid itself and determining whether its orbit was changed. DART carried the 14-kilogram satellite in a spring-loaded box and then ejected it on 11 September so it could fly past Dimorphos at a safe distance after the collision. Now, the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) has sent back images of the collision from up close.

Hurricane Ian forces NASA to delay Artemis I moon mission again (Saanich News)

NASA has been forced to pull its Artemis I moon rocket off the launch pad as Hurricane Ian approaches.

NASA’s Artemis mission is the first in a series of missions meant to return humans to the surface of the moon. In late 2025, the Artemis-III mission is scheduled to return astronauts to the lunar surface. According to NASA, the rocket will be moved back into its engineering workshop to protect it from the storm.

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