On September 26 at 11.15 pm UTC, NASA's DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) will be the first to deliberately and measurably change the motion of a significant body in our Solar System.
It's the size of a fridge, launched into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and currently hurtling towards a 160-metre-wide asteroid. In a few short day, the DART spacecraft will crash into Dimorphos.
On Sept. 26, NASA will conduct the first test of a technology designed to protect the planet from hazardous asteroids or comets.The Lowell Discovery Telescope, or LDT, located near the northern Arizona community of Happy Jack, will play an integral role in the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART.
Using some of the world’s most powerful telescopes, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test investigation team has completed a six-night observation campaign to confirm earlier calculations of the orbit of Dimorphos