![]() ![]() However, it will be critically important to proving that this type of planetary defense strategy does work. Potentially dangerous asteroids (images)īecause the two asteroids don't pose any threat to Earth, this test won't directly make Earth safer. ![]() The greatest asteroid encounters of all time! Mission team members on Earth will be studying the pair of space rocks using telescopes to measure the effect of DART's impact on Dimorphos' orbit. The mission aims to shorten the moonlet's orbit around Didymos by several minutes. The craft will collide almost head-on with the moonlet, pushing it and altering its orbit around Didymos. The mission will test kinetic impact technology, a planetary defense strategy. Neither asteroid in this system poses a threat to Earth, experts have reassured.ĭART's target is Dimorphos. ![]() (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)ĭART will travel to a two-asteroid system that includes a small "moonlet" asteroid named Dimorphos that orbits around a larger asteroid known as Didymos, which means "twin" in Greek.ĭepending on where it is in its orbit around the sun, these two space rocks could be anywhere from 6 to 306 million miles (10 to 493 million kilometers) from Earth, but right now they're roughly 300 million miles (483.6 million km) away from Earth, astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts told. An artist's depiction of the DART spacecraft approaching the Didymos system. ![]()
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