SpaceX Wins Contract to Help NASA Deflect an Asteroid - PCMag

There are some disasters the world just isn't prepared for, and one of those is an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. NASA is determined to come up with a solution to that problem, though, and it just hired the services of SpaceX to help achieve it.

The best way to prepare for deflecting an asteroid is to do a test run, which is exactly what NASA has planned for its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). DART is set to be the first space mission "to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impactor on a binary asteroid target." The target in question is called Didymos B, and it's the smaller asteroid of the two Didymos asteroids. The name Didymos is Greek for "twin."

The aim of DART is three-fold. NASA wants to demonstrate it can measure asteroid deflection within a 10 percent range of accuracy, to capture high resolution images of the target asteroid prior to impact, and to prove it can use "autonomous guidance with proportional navigation" to hit the center of a 150 meter target body.

DART will intercept Didymos B in October 2022, but before then the agency needs to plan every stage of the mission including the launch. Yesterday, NASA announced that it had selected SpaceX to provide launch services. The planned DART launch will happen in June 2021 using a Falcon 9 rocket, with the launch taking place at Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Solar electric propulsion (using NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster) will be used by DART to allow it to intercept the asteroid in October 2022 when it's 11 million kilometers from Earth. The technique for deflecting the asteroid is known as a kinetic impaction, which sees a spacecraft at high-speed navigated into the path of the target and hopefully changing its trajectory.

At $69 million, the DART mission is relatively cheap when you consider that, if successful, it paves the way for potentially saving life on Earth in the future.

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