In late 2022, the DART spacecraft is poised to autonomously navigate toward and collide with Dimorphos when it's about 7 million miles from Earth - its closest point to Earth. That second, smaller fragment orbiting Didymos is DART's target: Dimorphos. Target acquired: DimorphosĬruising through our solar system is a grayish space rock about a half mile wide known as Didymos, which, with a gentle gravitational pull, keeps a companion asteroid on a leash. For now, here are a few crucial mission specs to know about in preparation for launch day. Until then, be sure to check out CNET Highlights for updates, clips and more inside news on the mission. Here's how that time translates to different zones: The DART mission's objective is simple: NASA wants to understand if we can crash into an asteroid to prevent such a calamity from wiping humans out, too.

But nearly 66 million years ago, as you may recall, dinosaurs were wiped out by a massive space rock by the name of Chicxulub. Thankfully, they aren't too menacing because most of the rock burns up in Earth's atmosphere. ET).Īsteroids, which range in size from refrigerators to automobiles, collide with our planet more often than you might think. The spacecraft's launch window opens this week on Tuesday, Nov. It's programmed to crash.ĭART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is NASA's test run of a planetary defense system intended to nudge incoming asteroids away from Earth - by literally smashing spacecraft into them. Unlike beloved robotic explorers Lucy and the Parker Solar Probe, DART isn't destined for decades of solar system science. The probe is set to blast off to a distant rock aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and, should it succeed in its mission, it will meet an explosive end. The large size – about the size of an office block – and the nature of its orbit, coupled with its relatively large velocity relative to the Earth rule out any potential for 2014 DX110 being space junk in solar orbit returning to Earth’s vicinity, though such objects from the Apollo missions and the Chinese Chang’e-2 Moon mission have been recovered as Earth asteroids before.On Tuesday evening, NASA is launching a doomed spacecraft known as DART. 2014 DX110 will be moving at a velocity of 14.8 kilometres per second relative to Earth on closest approach Wednesday night and will be inside the Earth’s Hill sphere of gravitational influence from March 4 th to March 7 th, though of course, it’s moving much too fast for capture.Ģ014 DX110 will be interior of the Moon’s orbit from 18:06 UT/1:06 PM EST on March 5 th until 00:07 UT March 6 th (7:07 PM EST on the night of March 5 th). 2014 DX110 passed sufficiently close enough to Earth on these passages to alter its orbit so that it now returns to our terrestrial neighborhood every 13 odd years during the span of the 21 st century. Looking back through the European Space Agency’s Near-Earth Objects Dynamics Site, asteroid 2014 DX110 also made an undocumented close passage of Earth on March 17 th, 1998 at a minimum possible miss distance of 102,300 miles/163,680 kilometres distant, and a similar passage March 22 nd, 1982. Generally speaking, asteroids passing interior to the Moon’s orbit grab our attention for further scrutiny.

The orbit of 2014 DX110 takes it just interior of Earth’s at a perihelion of 0.83 A.U.s from the Sun and out to an aphelion of 3.6 A.U.s into the realm of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The discovery of asteroid 2014 DX110 was announced by the Minor Planet Center on Sunday, March 2 nd in electronic circular 2014-E22. This means that 2014 DX110 is approaching the Earth from just southward and behind it in its orbit around the Sun before crossing just inside of our orbit and northward of the ecliptic plane. It also has a fairly shallow inclined orbit relative to the ecliptic traced out by Earth’s path around the Sun, with a tilt of just over 5.7 degrees. 2014 DX110 is an Apollo-class asteroid, and has an orbital period of 1192 days or about 3.26 years.

It should be easy to pick out the motion of 2014 DX110 moving against the starry background at closest approach in real time. This large Apollo NEO is projected to pass 8 lunar distances or over 3 million kilometres away from the Earth on March 11 th at 9:05 UT/4:05 AM EST. And the folks at the Virtual Telescope Project will be covering another asteroid flyby on Sunday, March 9 th starting at 23:00 UT/6:00 PM EST to track the 180 meter asteroid 2014 CU13. Its been a busy last few weeks in terms of asteroid flybys, including a passage of Amor NEO asteroid 2014 DU110 earlier today at 15:54 UT/10:54 AM EST at 0.14 A.U.s or just over 20 million kilometres distant. The webcast of the event is expected to go live at 20:30 UT, and will include live commentary.

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