How to watch NASA slam the DART spacecraft into an asteroid
NASA is about to intentionally crash a spacecraft the size of a vending machine into a space rock the size of a great Egyptian pyramid.
Incredibly, you can watch this unprecedented September 26 event live.
The mission is called DART, or Double Asteroid Redirection Test, and is mankind’s first-ever attempt to move an asteroid in a targeted manner. The rocky target, Dimorphos, is no threat to Earth, but the mission is an experiment to see how civilization could change the path of one menacing asteroid, one should be on a collision course with our planet. (Happily, no known asteroid over 460 feet in diameter will threaten Earth in the next century or so.)
It’s a $330 million critical mission. And it might pay off one day, big time.
“We are currently defenseless against any asteroid aimed at Earth.”
“We are defenseless right now against any asteroid that targets Earth,” Markus Wilde, associate professor of aerospace, physics and space sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, told Mashable.
What we’ll see when NASA intentionally crashes into an asteroid
How to observe the DART effect
The impact between the 1,300-pound DART spacecraft and Dimorphos – a 525 foot wide asteroid actually orbiting a much larger sibling, the half-mile-wide Didymos — will occur about 6.8 million miles from Earth. But the spacecraft has a camera (dubbed “DRACO”) that will stream back to Earth one frame per second in real time. Until the impact, of course.
Where to see: NASA will broadcast the impact live on NASA TV. You can watch on NASA’s website. You can watch on the NASA TV YouTube channel. Or you can tune in to the embedded NASA live stream right below.
When to watch: Live coverage begins September 26, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. ET. The spacecraft will meet Dimorphos at 7:14 p.m. ET.
Alternative: If you just want to see the real-time “quiet” feed from the DART camera without the NASA presentation or explanation, you can tune in to the NASA live YouTube channel starting at 5:30 p.m. ET.
The consequences of the impact
For the asteroid, the impact will be like a little nudge or a punch. The goal is to prove that such a collision can easily move a space rock from its final trajectory. If it works, in the future, given enough warning, humanity is likely to throw a menacing space rock off course. NASA hopes to show that it can slow Dimorphos’ orbit around its sibling asteroid by about 10 minutes (orbit currently lasts about 12 hours).
“That’s enough time to make sure it misses Earth,” Andrew Rivkin, a planetary astronomer at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and one of DART’s lead scientists, told Mashable.
The collision, while relatively small, will still fling about 220,000 pounds of rock into space. And we will be able to see that too, but not immediately. DART recently released a toaster-sized spacecraft called the LICIACube, which will be fitted with dual cameras and will observe both the impact and the aftermath. This footage will arrive in the days and weeks following the impact.
Enjoy the show.