DART: The Double Asteroid Redirection Test - Livestream

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, is the world’s first full-scale planetary defense test, demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection technology. As part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy, the DART mission proved that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it, a method of asteroid deflection known as kinetic impact. DART simultaneously tested new technologies and provided important data to enhance our modeling and predictive capabilities and help us better prepare for an asteroid that might pose a threat to Earth, should one be discovered.

True to its name, DART was a focused spacecraft, designed to direct itself to impact an asteroid at roughly 14,000 miles per hour, or approximately 4 miles per second (6.15 kilometers per second). Its target, which poses no threat to Earth, is the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos (Greek for “two forms”), which orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos (Greek for “twin”).

The spacecraft was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on November 23, 2021 and successfully collided with Dimorphos on September 26, 2022.

Speaker: Dr. Andy Rivkin, Johns Hopkins University, Lead Investigator of the DART Mission

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