NASA’s DART spacecraft is supposed to change an asteroid’s orbit by crashing into it going 6 kilometers per second.NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS APL

BY ADAM MANN

Intentional crash of robotic probe will test way to avert asteroid impacts on earth.

In the name of planetary defense, NASA is set to launch a robotic probe next week that in late 2022 will hurtle into a sizable space rock in the hopes of nudging its orbit. Although the celestial target of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) poses no danger to our planet, the mission will assess the feasibility of deflecting potentially hazardous objects away from Earth.

“DART is such a fricking cool mission,” says Peter Schultz, a geologist at Brown University who studies impacts in the Solar System. The $325 million mission may launch as early as 24 November on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Illustration of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and its target, Dimorphos, a moonlet of the asteroid Didymos. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

By Robin George Andrews 

Our planet is vulnerable to thousands of “city-killer” space rocks. If—when—one is found on a collision course with Earth, will we be ready to deflect it?

Back when Andy Rivkin was in college, he had a few friends in medical school. “I was like, oh man, I don’t want do anything that has too much responsibility,” he says. Instead, he looked to the stars. “Astronomy seemed pretty safe.” And, for a while, it was. Rather than having to make decisions about someone’s root canal or abdominal surgery, he watched worlds flit about in the darkness.

But Rivkin, a planetary astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Baltimore, has found himself with more responsibility than he expected. Along with hundreds of others, he is part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, an ambitious effort led by NASA and the APL to slam an uncrewed spacecraft into an asteroid to change its orbit. This is a dry run for the real deal: one day, a technological descendant of DART could be used to deflect a planet-threatening space rock, saving millions—perhaps billions—of lives in the process.

On November 23, DART will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. Sometime next fall, it will smash into its target at 24,000 kilometers per hour. Ground-based astronomers like Rivkin will watch the rendezvous unfold with bated breath, hoping to see the telltale signs of success: a dust cloud, and an asteroid dancing to humanity’s tune for the very first time. Will it work?