NASA DART: Mission Success!
NASA's recent DART mission was an attempt to equip humankind with tools for planetary defense... and no, not against aliens- but against asteroids. There were two parts to the mission:
1. Can we hit the target (a moon, Dimorphos, that is orbiting an asteroid in a known pattern)?
And wow did we hit it spot on, as the image below shows from JHU! There were a lot of estimates of the size of the Dimorphos, but we had no definite answer on the size or even shape of it. The running joke was that it was going to be donut shaped, and the projectile would fly right through it. Thank god it wasn't a donut! Here's the official NASA stream if you want to watch the impact.
2. Will colliding with the moon change its orbit?
This one took more time to figure out because we had to measure the orbit and see if there was any change. The answer came a few days ago, we changed the orbit!!!!!
Mission success. We will continue to monitor the skies for any signs of future impact and now we're one step more prepared for it.
Thanks to the NASA social media team for letting me join and experience such an incredible time. Special thanks to Neil from NASA Social media and Jessica from JHU for being such an incredible hosts! Till next time.
Sunny Murthy