Outreach

Today history can be made in modern space exploration

As part of the Planetary Defense plan, on November 24, 2021, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was launched. Its target is the binary asteroid Didymos, made up of a main body 800m in diameter and a moon, Didymoon, which measures 170m in diameter.

The fundamental objective of the DART mission is to prove, in Didymoon, that the kinetic impact technique works to modify the orbital speed of an asteroid and is the first step in planetary preparation plans to face, in the future, the consequences of an asteroid entering a collision orbit with Earth. For this, DART will literally crash on the surface of Didymoon, trying to modify the asteroid's orbital speed by 0.00043 m/s. The impact is expected to take place today, September 26, at 6:14 p.m. Central Mexico time. The incidents of this important event in the modern history of space exploration can be followed through the NASA streaming channel (https://www.nasa.gov), starting at 5:00 p.m.

At the time of impact, Didymos will be 11 million kilometers from Earth, so this event does not represent any danger to our planet.

DART is part of the Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission that will be completed with the launch of the Hera mission, of the European Space Agency (ESA), on October 8, 2024. Hera will arrive at Didymoon in December 2026 and will be able to study, in great detail, the results of the DART mission.