DART Mission Follow-Up: A Smash Hit!

The DART Mission involved sending a spacecraft to collide with an asteroid. Find out how it demonstrated the feasibility of NASA’s planetary defense strategy and exceeded expectations.

We had tuned into the NASA channel, and I was spellbound. It was September 26, 2022 and the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was closing in on the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system.

As readers will realize, especially if they watched the movie Don’t Look Up, our planet is at risk of a collision with a very large asteroid. Although astronomers don’t see any immediate threat, anything that can happen eventually does happen.

So, it’s only a matter of time before an asteroid like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, or the one that leveled the forests around Tunguska, Siberia strikes again. DART was NASA’s first attempt at finding a way to avoid that kind of catastrophe.

Asteroid Impact Mission Was Successful

As we watched the screen, DART drew closer and closer to Dimorphos until the screen went blank without warning. Although losing the signal from a spacecraft is usually a bad thing, in this case, it was exactly what the researchers were hoping…