Transcripts For CSPAN NASA Post-DART Mission Press Conferenc

Mission Operations Center lost signal with the spacecraft, and normally losing signal with the spacecraft is a very bad thing, but in this case, it was the ideal outcome. During the next halfhour we will get a sense of what it was like in the control room as we hear from some of the team members who were there for the final approach and impact of the dart spacecraft. I want to thank nasa for challenging us with this project and entrusting us with the mission. Dart has now joined a long list of first in space, first photos of earth from space, creation of satellite navigation with the transit system, the incredible and the recordsetting probe that touch the sun. We can now add to this list art worlds first Planetary Defense transmission. On behalf of the applied Physics Laboratory, gratulations to the dart team into nasa on this historic accomplishment and first demonstration of a Game Changing Planetary Defense capability. Go dark. Thank you, director, and again, welcome to the Johns Hopkins applied Physics Laboratory were nasa start vision has just made history. Im with nasas office of communication. Earlier, we saw incredible live coverage of darts terminal approach to this target asteroid in near real time for humanitys firstever test for Planetary Defense. Lets take a look at that instant replay and then incredible footage. Wow, so here you can see the spacecraft is autonomously navigating itself, it is precision locked on the asteroid , cruising in at a speed of 4000 miles per second. Now you can see it filling the screen, we have never seen this object before. Bullseye. We also have incredible highresolution imagery from the camera which we are now able to show. Heres the asteroid system, incredible surface detail of an asteroid 7 million miles from earth that we have never before seen, absolutely amazing, something for the history books. This is the last frame from the spacecraft before we confirmed loss of signal. Im joined now by some members from the dart team who have helped launch the first of its kind mission which sounds like something from a sciencefiction movie. They include ed reynolds, the dart Mission Systems engineer, the guidance engineer, caroline ernst, and julie, dart navigation lead at apl. Sorry, at nasas jet propulsion laboratory. We will hear some opening remarks and then we will take some questions from the media we have here with us in the room and also dialed into our phone bridge. We will try to answer as many questions as we have in the limited amount of time, so lets get started. Tell us how youre feeling right now. Great, and relieved. I definitely feel relieved, and its absolutely wonderful to something this amazing, and we are so excited to be done. Weve arced on the mission for at least seven years now and its been the work of over 1000 people. You see it so beautifully concluded today, its just incredible feeling, and also very tiring. Again, huge congratulations to you and the entire dart team, absolutely amazing history has been made today. We will now take a few questions from the media, or folks in the room with us. With us. State your name and affiliation and for anyone dialed into the phone bridge, press star one to be entered into the queue. How close to the bullseye was this . I heard something about 10 meters from the center. Do you have an idea of just how close you got to hitting the target . Thats right, we were getting really close in and were getting much better at understanding where we are. The Investigation Team will now analyze it. Quick 17 meters from the final estimate, that is to the center of the lit up pixel, so there may be refinement on that still. You saw the asteroid was not actually finding where that center is is going to take some time. Thank you, we are ready for the next question. Quick swing did you know you were going to hit it, or at what point during the approach did you know this is going to be successful in terms of hitting it, whether it was 17 meters or 17 meters or not, that were going to hit the asteroid . You can add more detail, but as we approach, even when we were like an hour or 50 minutes out, it really looked like a nominal trajectory that weve practiced over and over again. We practice all different types of geometry and scenarios, and like i kept telling the people, this is nominal. Like 40 minutes out, youre really getting a good feeling, you can tell everybody in the whole room was getting that same feeling, it was actually a fairly relaxed environment, and then as we hit the last two minutes where we could no longer command the spacecraft, and you knew we were on the trajectory, you knew we were not going to do anything to change it, it was just joy, you got to enjoy the moment. Absolutely, i just want to say thank you to the navigation team, because they put us on this perfect trajectory, the jpl team did a lot of analysis to execute the maneuvers were able to put us on the trajectory of hitting the bullseye on didymus, and thats why the whole team felt so comfortable most of the time that we actually were going to impact and impact well. I will say that once we got a look, the team was confident we were going to hit. That was the one unknown, once we knew what it looked like, we were very confident in the crafts ability. That was definitely the defining moment, where we knew it exist. That was a big relief for everyone. We were seeing what we were expecting to see, we were heading straight to didymus and very happy and relieved that have did not have to do that have did not have to do that much. You describe the feeling is absolute joy, im just curious, im just curious, those last five minutes, what the atmosphere was like. And your first thoughts about seeing it up close with those boulders and crack sent channels. Definitely as we were getting close to the asteroid, there was a lot of joy, i would say both terror and joy at the same time, because we saw we were going to impact, coming into the field of view for the first time, we really had no idea what to expect, but we knew we were going to hit. I think all of us were kind of holding our breath, im kind of surprised nobody passed out actually. But at the end, i felt a little numb. Yes, we were celebrating and there was a lot of joy but you also feel a little bit numb that so many years of work is now complete. So the expectation of what is next. But there are a lot of next things going out for dart. I will let you guys talk about that. These guys their job is done , but ours is just beginning. I have been embedded with the Engineering Team, watching them plan and test and Work Together all year. Draco was built here at apl so seeing it go from plans to something that took amazing pictures is awesome. These guys were all standing up and handsoff in the last two minutes, just watching. The pictures from my screen were outstanding. I saw them come in at the same time as everyone else. We will spend the next few years doing analysis. Our job has just started. But it just looks amazing. Its adorable. This little moon. Its so cute. It looks like other small asteroids we have seen. We saw others through nasa and Japanese Space Agency missions. They are also covered in boulders. We expect it will be loosely consolidated. Didymus, i wanted to watch it more as it left the frame. All of these craters and boulders. A lot of work proximity will do in the next few days. We will find the exact impact site to really understand what kind of crater we made. And groundbased observers are looking at data as we speak and well find out what we really did over the next few weeks. Thank you. We are ready for the next question. Kristin fisher, cnn. Could you please explain exactly how long it will take before we know if dart was successful in pushing the asteroid off the current orbit . We know the impact was successful tonight, congratulations. But if you can just walk us through the timing of the second piece one more time. And finally, i would also like to know if you think that all earthlings should rest a little easier tonight. Thank you. Thank you for the question. We are going to see Additional Data over groundbased observatory are already taking data. Jwse and missions are concentrating on didymus and dimorphos. In the next couple of months we will get confirmation of exact period change we made. It will not be tomorrow, i am sorry. We might see some images coming up in the next day or two. The little cubesat should have flown by now and taken images of the plume that we we created. We will see that data come in the next couple of days and over the next few months we will get more information from the Investigation Team on what period change we made. That is the number two goal. Number one, hit the asteroid. Number two, measure the change and characterize how much ejector we put out. To clarify, about two months . Yes. I would say a couple of months for the full quantitative answer. Some things will likely come out in days or weeks to say this is what the observatory saw. I know they plan to download images in the next few days so we will get some parts of the answer soon but i would say the quantitative full answer, a couple of months. And should all earthlings sleep a little easier tonight . I think as far as we can tell, the first Planetary Defense tests were a success and we can all clap to that. [applause] so yes, earthlings should sleep better. I definitely will. We will definitely sleep better. Thank you. Next question. Did anything go wrong tonight . Did you have to make any adjustments in the last four hours . We did not. It has just been wonderful. This mission was straight down the middle of what our expectations were. There were zero adjustments. It was actually kind of disappointing. We had planned for all sorts of contingencies and did not need any of them. But you plan those so that you do not have to use them. It was wonderful. Now that you have gotten a look at the surface of the asteroid, can you tell us exactly what happened to the spacecraft beyond it being smashed to bits . In graphic detail, are the bits and pieces floating in space . Are they embedded in the crater . If you could hover over the asteroid right now, what would you be seeing . That is a good question. I would say there could be ejecta still coming out because the gravity of this is so low that it takes quite a while for things to fall back. So there might still be a cloud of ejecta for a while. We expect a crater of 10 to 20 meters. If it is a trouble pile, that means it is low in strength and that means you will get a lot of ejecta. That means the spacecraft is kaput. We expected to lose signal. You could find some pieces in the crater. You could find debris also. I am not sure that you would recognize it. We will have to see when hera gets there in 2026. We were carrying a lot of hydrogen and xenon on board, so we were discussing in the control room if we would actually see brightening based on the fact that we just evaporated a whole bunch of senon. Can you describe the bittersweet feeling of this project that you worked on for so many years, watching something do its job and be destroyed at the same time . I dont have a bittersweet feeling. We were given a really hard goal. And you focus on the goal. I do not think any of us named the spacecraft. [laughter] we achieved the requirement. We achieved the goal. We did a methodical process to develop the design that could do that and to me it is more just satisfaction that the process worked and we achieved the goal. You always think, we missed, the spacecraft lives. But then we did not achieve the goal. I will relish this moment and i am happy with the outcome. I think the part we will miss the most as those who worked on it for a long time is the team. The team we had is amazing and we really enjoyed working as a team together. We had fun, built a spacecraft during covid, bonded over it, and i felt like it made us stronger going forward. So the bittersweet part will be the fact that the whole team will disband and now move on two different projects and we all hope we get to Work Together again at some point. But the dart team, the Engineering Team and management team, we are kind of done and moving on to other things. I think the other part of that is like ed said, this is the goal. This is what it was supposed to do. We did not have years of it in orbit and then it crashed and you remember the good times. The good times, we just saw them. It was supposed to do that to get the good times. This was the moment for the spacecraft. I have to say, i shed a tear. There is a lot of emotion and in that critical time, we have had some surprises in the last few weeks and a lot of teamwork going on in the last few weeks and there is a lot of friendship being built. It was a relief to see it went so well from a navigation perspective. We were heading straight to didymus and very happy and relieved that smartnav have did not have to do that much. So there is relief. But at the end i did shed a , tear. Its just the emotion that comes out. Thank you. We are ready for the next question. How will you go about calculating the new orbit or trajectory of dimorphos . With all the groundbased observing they have been observing the system for years to get a good baseline of the preimpact situation and they will observe over the next days and weeks and compare it to what was there before. With light curves. We cannot see the two bodies from the earth. But we can tell, much like when you discover an exoplanet, you can tell it is there by the light dimming when it goes in front of the star. It is similar with the system. You get eclipses between the main and the moon so you measure the timing of eclipses and that is what tells you how shortened the orbit got. You mentioned that look cute. Did any other adjectives come to mind . How would you describe the shape . Like a bread bun or an egg, what was going through your mind . Every asteroid is a potato, right . [laughter] it is awfully egg shaped. Compared to other things we have seen, it looked egg shaped with a bunch of boulders on the top like it was a pile of rubble. I was a little surprised by the shape of didymus. We had a radar model which was good and it got the bulk shape but it was more elongated like i thought and of course you cannot see details with the radar model. So we will be able to tell a lot about how the system formed and what it has experienced over time as we look at these images closer. I believe we now have a question from a reporter dialed in. These are the questions from the phone bridge. The first question is from Stephen Clark in spaceflight now. In terms of photos, what would be the earliest opportunity for a downlink to see photos . 40 minutes before impact we got a short email from our italian colleagues who were shooting to get an extended pass about three hours from now. That would be the very first opportunity. So its just a matter of if the path can be scheduled and can they coordinate telemetry, getting the image now. But it is a priority for them. One other question from the phone bridge for now. Jim siegel with master tech asks, he understands jpl keeps a century risk table of objects and are there other asteroids or objects that have already been identified to go after next . I can jump in here. For any questions related to future Planetary Defense efforts, please reach out to nasas office of communication for response. Hello, i am a student at embry riddle university. An asteroid hit mars last friday. I did not know, when we call it Planetary Defense, is it just earth . There is stuff everywhere. Every planet gets hit. Asterisk it hit. The moon gets hit. All the time. We often use those craters to tell us more about what happened in history. What happened in the beginning to get us to where we are now. A lot of stuff happened, but now, not so much, a lot of time has gone by. In terms of defense, we are the only place with life right now. Thats what we are primarily worried about. The Planetary Defense office does look at all the impacts and assesses what happens. That is part of the office strategy, to characterize other objects in the solar system and characterize the threats, understand what they are made out of. As we mentioned today bringing , it back to didymus and dimorphos, what are they made out of . Did you see that giant rubble pile . What will it create . Will the impact to move the asteroid as much as we expect . Understanding these craters on the moon and mars really helps with that. You have to look at all the data to understand what is happening here. Thank you so much, we have time for one more question. You had some somewhat new technology on board the spacecraft as well, the solar powered ion propulsion. I wanted to know if you would address how that went and also how this relates to future missions . I love to talk about new technology on dart. Our solar panel works beautifully. We had to deploy them autonomously and they worked wonderfully, they provided us as expected and the deployment mechanism worked extremely well. It is extremely important for future missions to other planets. We thought the solar panels worked wonderfully. The engine was demonstrated in flight for about two hours. It worked as expected, however there was a little bit of interaction with the spacecraft as well that was not anticipated, and we have since then not fired the ion thruster. Thank goodness we didnt have to do it. Early on in the next development, as we are developing our interface document, we knew when you started up it has a reset mode, and the recent mode was understood to introduce up to when he five amps of current that goes through the spacecraft structure, but what was discovered after we launched and after we did the two hour demonstration where we were looking at our telemetry, we found the anomaly in our power system, and we investigated and it led to an investigation using the engineering model and thruster and we found there was not one but two different reset phenomenons that could occur, the second one was rare and now it is understood, but instead of introducing up to 25 amps, it introduced over 100 amps. That was something we were not testing to demonstrate that we could withstand that, and just from a risk perspective and trying to achieve the primary mission, which tonight is hitting the asteroid, we did not want to put that at risk. So we talked with nasa and came up with a recommendation and a concurrence to just not fire it anymore. If we had missed, if we had a missed approach and the spacecraft was hea