Planetary Defense News

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be honored with the 2024 Michael Collins Trophy for Current Achievement. For its work developing and managing the first-ever planetary defense test mission, the team comprised by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) and the…

November 2023 Each month, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office releases a monthly update featuring the most recent figures on NASA’s planetary defense efforts, near-Earth object close approaches, and other timely facts about comets and asteroids that could pose an impact hazard with Earth. Here is what we’ve found for November.

From Impact to Innovation: A Year of Science and Triumph for Historic DART Mission

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun like the planets with orbits that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit. NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) to manage the agency’s ongoing efforts in…

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test​ (DART) was recognized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) with the organization’s newest award — the AIAA Award for Aerospace Excellence — at the AIAA Awards Gala, Thursday, May 18, at the…

To help guide NASA’s efforts over the next decade, the agency today released its Planetary Defense Strategy and Action Plan.

Ed Reynolds, a program manager in the Space Exploration Sector at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, has been named to the 2023 TIME 100 list of most influential people.

In recognition of its successful completion of the world’s first planetary defense test mission, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) has earned the National Space Club and Foundation’s Nelson P. Jackson Aerospace Award, which honors the previous year’s most outstanding…

NASA’s DART Data Validates Kinetic Impact as Planetary Defense Method

Editor’s Note: This feature was updated Feb. 8 to include a quote from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) team has been selected to receive the 2023 Space Achievement Award, a top award from the…

NEO Surveyor is the first purpose-built space telescope that will advance NASA’s planetary defense efforts by finding and tracking hazardous near-Earth objects. A space telescope designed to search for the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that stray into Earth’s orbital neighborhood,…

Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft’s kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid’s orbit. This marks humanity’s first time purposely changing…

1 min read First Images from Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube Satellite Image captured by the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube a few minutes after the intentional collision of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, captured…

After 10 months flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration – successfully impacted its asteroid target Dimorphos on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid…

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is set to make history next Monday as the world’s first planetary defense test, and the spacecraft’s own “mini-photographer” LICIACube (short for Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids) is warming up to capture the…