{"id":17345,"date":"2022-09-27T00:32:34","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T16:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/dart-probe-hits-bulls-eye-on-an-asteroid-and-strikes-a-blow-for-planetary-defense\/"},"modified":"2022-09-27T00:32:34","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T16:32:34","slug":"dart-probe-hits-bulls-eye-on-an-asteroid-and-strikes-a-blow-for-planetary-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/dart-probe-hits-bulls-eye-on-an-asteroid-and-strikes-a-blow-for-planetary-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"DART probe hits bull\u2019s eye on an asteroid and strikes a blow for planetary defense"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An image from NASA\u2019s DART spacecraft shows the asteroid Didymos at lower right and Dimorphos, a moonlet that orbits Didymos, at upper center. (NASA \/ JHUAPL Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ten months after NASA\u2019s DART spacecraft was aimed at a mini-asteroid, the probe hit the bull\u2019s eye today in a practice round for planetary defense that got an assist from engineers at Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, Wash.<\/p>\n

DART \u2014 an acronym that stands for \u201cDouble Asteroid Redirection Test\u201d \u2014 was designed to find out how much impact a projectile could have for diverting a potentially threatening asteroid away from Earth.<\/p>\n

ln this case, the object posed no actual threat. DART\u2019s target was Dimorphos, an asteroid the size of Egypt\u2019s Great Pyramid that\u2019s in orbit around a half-mile-wide asteroid called Didymos. Both celestial bodies are on a path that ranges out beyond Mars\u2019 orbit and comes close enough to Earth\u2019s orbit for study. At the time of today\u2019s impact, the double-asteroid system was nearly 7 million miles from our planet.<\/p>\n

The mission team clapped and cheered at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland as near-real-time imagery from the spacecraft\u2019s DRACO camera showed Dimorphos looming larger in the metaphorical windshield. The DART spacecraft body, which NASA says weighed about 1,260 pounds and was roughly the size of a vending machine, struck the mini-moon at an estimated velocity of 14,000 mph.<\/p>\n

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