On September 26, NASA finally succeeded in colliding the spacecraft of the DART mission with the asteroid Dimorphos, in a test of planetary defense which aims to prepare humanity in the event of a real threat (fortunately the target in question has no chance of colliding 15 days later and we are close to knowing if the impact was sufficient to deflect the orbit of the space object.
NASA has scheduled a press conference for this Tuesday (11) where it will reveal more details about the results of the DART mission. The agency has not confirmed, but it is expected that the first data on the deviation from the orbit will be released. Judging by the presence of illustrious personalities, such as the administrator of the organ, Bill Nelson, the broadcast will be very important.
According to the announcement, the press conference is scheduled to start at 3:00 p.m. (Brasilia time) and can be viewed on the NASA website. Participating in the show are NASA Administrator Bill Nelson; Giorgio Saccoccia, President of the Italian Space Agency; Lori Glaze, director of the planetary science division at NASA headquarters in Washington; Tom Statler, DART program scientist at NASA Headquarters, and Nancy Chabot, DART coordination manager at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.
DART mission and its goal to collide with an asteroid
Contrary to what we have seen in science fiction films, the collision did not destroy the asteroid, and it was not even considered. The intent of NASA’s multimillion-dollar mission is to find out if the impact of the spacecraft is enough to knock Dimorphos slightly off course.
The asteroid must not be hijacked dangerously either. “We move the small, but the big is like an anchor. He’s got it,” Andy Cheng, chief planetary defense scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which manages the DART mission for NASA, explained at a press conference on Monday.
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Dimorphos is part of the Didymos double asteroid system and was chosen, among other things, to be able to be observed by telescopes here on Earth, even though it is 11 million kilometers from us. The Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube cubesat was launched with DART and is also recording the collision.
“The Didymos system is an eclipsing binary, indicating that from our position on Earth, Dimorphos regularly passes in front and behind Didymos in orbit,” JHUAPL officials wrote in a DART datasheet.
According to Nancy Chabot, DART mission coordinator and planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the collision exceeded the team’s expectations. However, there is still a lot of work to do. “I know other scientists like me on the team are already pointing to these images and saying, ‘Have you seen that rock? Did you see that smooth area? Said Chabot on the show.
Scientists will have yet another opportunity to see Dimorphos in detail, this time for much longer. The European Space Agency will launch the Hera follow-on mission in 2024.
Hera will arrive in 2026 and, unlike DART, will stay nearby, exploring Dimorphos and Didymos. The mission will give scientists a better view of the impact crater itself after the dust has settled, as well as the natural states of the asteroids. But by then, we’ll know if NASA managed to deflect the asteroid.
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