Achievement of the Planetary Defense Investigations of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission

0585412 - ASÚ 2025 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Chabot, N. L. - Rivkin, A. S. - Cheng, A. - Pravec, Petr - Scheirich, Peter … Total 129 authors
Achievement of the Planetary Defense Investigations of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission.
The Planetary Science Journal. Roč. 5, č. 2 (2024), č. článku 49. E-ISSN 2632-3338
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA20-04431S
Institutional support: RVO:67985815
Keywords : asteroids * small solar system bodies * near-Earth objects
OECD category: Astronomy (including astrophysics,space science)
Impact factor: 3.4, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Open access

we summarize DART's achievement of those requirements. On 2022 September 26, the DART spacecraft impacted Dimorphos, the secondary member of the Didymos near-Earth asteroid binary system, demonstrating an autonomously navigated kinetic impact into an asteroid with limited prior knowledge for planetary defense. Months of subsequent Earth-based observations showed that the binary orbital period was changed by –33.24 minutes, with two independent analysis methods each reporting a 1σ uncertainty of 1.4 s. Dynamical models determined that the momentum enhancement factor, β, resulting from DART's kinetic impact test is between 2.4 and 4.9, depending on the mass of Dimorphos, which remains the largest source of uncertainty. Over five dozen telescopes across the globe and in space, along with the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, have contributed to DART's investigations. These combined investigations have addressed topics related to the ejecta, dynamics, impact event, and properties of both asteroids in the binary system. A year following DART's successful impact into Dimorphos, the mission has achieved its planetary defense requirements, although work to further understand DART's kinetic impact test and the Didymos system will continue. In particular, ESA's Hera mission is planned to perform extensive measurements in 2027 during its rendezvous with the Didymos–Dimorphos system, building on DART to advance our knowledge and continue the ongoing international collaboration for planetary defense.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0353124