{"id":10816,"date":"2021-11-24T17:07:45","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T09:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/photos-falcon-9-rocket-stands-on-vandenberg-launch-pad-with-nasa-asteroid-probe\/"},"modified":"2021-11-24T17:07:45","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T09:07:45","slug":"photos-falcon-9-rocket-stands-on-vandenberg-launch-pad-with-nasa-asteroid-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/photos-falcon-9-rocket-stands-on-vandenberg-launch-pad-with-nasa-asteroid-probe\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos: Falcon 9 rocket stands on Vandenberg launch pad with NASA asteroid probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

These photos show SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket standing on Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, hours before liftoff with NASA\u2019s DART mission, an experiment to test how a spacecraft might deflect a hazardous asteroid away from Earth.<\/p>\n

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) launcher is awaiting blastoff at 10:21:02 p.m. EST Tuesday (1:21:02 a.m. EST; 0621:02 GMT Wednesday) from Vandenberg, a military launch facility on California\u2019s Central Coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft is sitting on top of the rocket. The Falcon 9 will send the spacecraft \u2014 about the size of a small car \u2014 on a course toward a pair of companion asteroids named Didymos and Dimorphos.<\/p>\n

DART will collide with Dimorphos \u2014 the smaller of the two \u2014 at around 15,000 mph (24,000 kilometers per hour) next September. Scientists will use ground-based telescopes to measure how much the impact, which will destroy the DART spacecraft, changed the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos, its larger companion.<\/p>\n

Didymos and Dimorphos are not a threat to Earth any time in the near future, but the kinetic impact technique could be used if scientists found an asteroid on a collision course with our planet. A deflection mission far enough in advance of the threat to Earth could nudge an asteroid into a different orbit, eliminating the hazard to our planet.<\/p>\n

Read our preview story for details on the mission.<\/p>\n

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Credit: Gene Blevins \/ LA Daily News<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: Gene Blevins \/ LA Daily News<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: Brian Sandoval \/ Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: Brian Sandoval \/ Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: Brian Sandoval \/ Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: Brian Sandoval \/ Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These photos show SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket standing on Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, hours before liftoff with NASA\u2019s DART mission, an experiment to test how a spacecraft might deflect a hazardous asteroid away from Earth. The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) launcher is awaiting blastoff at 10:21:02 p.m. EST Tuesday (1:21:02 a.m. EST; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}