Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission.

DART is a planetary defense-driven test of technologies for preventing an impact of Earth by a hazardous asteroid. DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space. The DART mission is in Phase C, led by APL and managed under NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program at Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and the Science Mission Directorate’s Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC.

Simulation of a projectile colliding with the surface of a rubble-pile asteroid, as may happen when DART collides with Dimorphos. This model shows how a rubble pile asteroid can bend and deform during crater formation.

Credits: JHUAPL/Angela Stickle

Fourteen sequential radar images captured by Arecibo in November 2003 of the near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos, DART’s target. To date, little is still known about both asteroids.

Credits: Arecibo Observatory/NASA