NASA's DART Targets Twins for Asteroid Defense

摘要

Taking a page from a science fiction movie script, NASA has approved a mission to deflect an asteroid to further planetary defense. The mission, dubbed the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), takes aim at an intermediate-size object that could cause regional damage if it collided with Earth. "DART would be NASA's first mission to demonstrate what's known as the kinetic impactor technique-striking the asteroid to shift its orbit-to defend against a potential future asteroid impact," said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA headquarters. To acquire the know-how needed to tackle potential threats, NASA created the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) in 2016 to ramp up the tracking and characterization of potentially hazardous objects and coordinate a response. In concert, the U.S. space agency approved the promotion of DART from concept development to the preliminary design phase in June 2017.