![]() ![]() The primary computational activities of this Office involve the continuous (and largely automatic) use of new data to. ![]() Today the #DARTMission will make history when it becomes world’s first full-scale #PlanetaryDefense test. In a first-of-its-kind mission, NASA is planning to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid on September 26 (Earth time), and you’ll be able to stream it live. In 1998, The NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office was established at JPL to coordinate NASA-sponsored efforts to detect, track and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids and comets that could approach the Earth. It’s the final cosmic collision countdown. According to NASA, in the final hours before the collision, the screen will “appear mostly black, with a single point of light.” That point of light will slowly get bigger until, of course, the camera dies with the spacecraft. Or, you can watch live images transmitted from the single camera aboard the spacecraft here, starting at 5:30 Eastern time.Ĭalled DRACO (short for Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation), the camera will transmit one image per second to Earth and will serve as the spacecraft’s eyesight, guiding it toward the space rock. You can witness the cosmic crash unfold via NASA’s official live broadcast here, starting at 6 p.m. The spacecraft will be traveling at a speed of about 14,000 mph when it hits the the relatively small asteroid (“small” meaning the size of a 50-story building), located about 6.8 million miles from us. On Monday, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will see if we’re able to defend ourselves against asteroids or comets that are on a high-speed trajectory towards earth. The huge asteroid, which is estimated to be a kilometer wide, flew past Earth at around 4.51pm ET (9.51pm GMT), according to NASA. Eastern time (7:14:23, to be exact) this evening. A small Sun-orbiting rock or particle less than about 3 feet (1 meter) in size. A potentially hazardous asteroid twice the size of Empire State Building passed close to Earth today, scientists say. Roughly ten months after its launch from Earth, DART will meet its final demise at 7:14 p.m. And how about this for some local pride: the brainpower behind the mission is based in the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Known as DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), the mission is also humanity’s first-ever attempt to accomplish such a feat. If successful, the mission would mark the first time humans have ever changed the trajectory of a celestial object. ![]()
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