AGU22: Press Conference: Pioneering Planetary Defense: What Comes Next After DART’s Asteroid Impact?
Since NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally slammed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos on Sept. 26 – altering its orbit by a whopping 32 minutes – the mission team has been asking itself one fundamental question: what are the implications for using this technique in the future, if such a need should arise?
Join DART scientists for a detailed interpretation of post-impact science and analysis from the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration. In the weeks after impact, scientists turned their focus toward measuring the momentum transfer from DART’s roughly 14,000 mile per hour (22,530 kilometer per hour) collision with Dimorphos. This included further analysis of the “ejecta” — the many tons of asteroidal rock displaced and launched into space by the impact – the recoil from which substantially enhanced DART’s push against its target asteroid.
After observing the ejecta evolution and modeling the dynamics and impact, the science team has a greater understanding of what the spacecraft achieved at the impact site and can more confidently characterize the asteroid’s physical properties, further advancing our understanding of how to address potentially hazardous asteroids in the future.
We know the experiment worked — now learn how humanity can apply this knowledge.
Speakers:
Tom Statler, DART Program Scientist - NASA Headquarters
Andy Rivkin, DART Investigation Team Lead - Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Christina Thomas, DART Observations Working Group Lead - Northern Arizona University
Alessandro Rossi, LICIACube Science Team Member - Instituto di Fisica Applicata Nella Carrara
Andy Cheng, DART Investigation Team Lead - Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
