#DARTmission: Engineer Builds Spacecraft to Impact Asteroid
October 24, 2021
| Credit | NASA |
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Before NASA’s #DARTmission could launch on its journey to slam into an asteroid — in the name of science — it had to be designed, built, launched, and flown.
Johns Hopkins APL systems engineer Elena Adams worked to make sure that the mission will hit its mark: Dimorphos, the moonlet orbiting asteroid Didymos.
The DART mission is a test of a technique that could be used to mitigate the threat of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, should one be discovered in the future.
DART’s target is not a threat to Earth.
While no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, only about 40% of those asteroids have been found.