SPACE
HOW NASA DEFLECTED AN ASTEROID BY CRASHING A SPACECRAFT INTO IT
HORIZONS
NASA’s DART spacecraft made impact with its asteroid target on 27 September. Dr Tim Gregory tells us about this first-of-its-kind mission
WHAT IS THE DART MISSION?
It stands for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. It’s essentially a big science experiment to see if crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is a good way to change its orbit around the Sun and potentially deflect an Earthcrossing asteroid away, should that happen in the future… or rather when that happens.
TELL US ABOUT THE SPACECRAFT.
DART is quite a hefty spacecraft. It weighs more than half a tonne, at 610 kilograms. One of my favourite things about this mission is that onboard is a CubeSat [LICIACube, or Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids]. CubeSats are little, miniature satellites about the size of a champagne bottle. This particular CubeSat is Italian in origin and it’s got a camera.