Successful Kinetic Impact into an Asteroid for Planetary Defense
Abstract
While no known asteroid poses a threat to Earth for at least the next century, the catalog of near-Earth asteroids is incomplete for objects whose impacts would produce regional devastation. Several approaches have been proposed to potentially prevent an asteroid impact with Earth by deflecting or disrupting an asteroid. A test of kinetic impact technology was identified as the highest priority space mission related to asteroid mitigation. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the first full-scale test of kinetic impact technology. The mission's target asteroid was Dimorphos, the secondary member of the S-type binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos. This binary asteroid system was chosen to enable ground-based telescopes to quantify the asteroid deflection caused by DART's impact. While past missions have utilized impactors to investigate the properties of small bodies those earlier missions were not intended to deflect their targets and did not achieve measurable deflections. Here we report the DART spacecraft's autonomous kinetic impact into Dimorphos and reconstruct the impact event, including the timeline leading to impact, the location and nature of the DART impact site, and the size and shape of Dimorphos. The successful impact of the DART spacecraft with Dimorphos and the resulting change in Dimorphos's orbit demonstrates that kinetic impactor technology is a viable technique to potentially defend Earth if necessary.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.02248,
title = {Successful Kinetic Impact into an Asteroid for Planetary Defense},
author = {R. Terik Daly and Carolyn M. Ernst and Olivier S. Barnouin and Nancy L. Chabot and Andrew S. Rivkin and Andrew F. Cheng and Elena Y. Adams and Harrison F. Agrusa and Elisabeth D. Abel and Amy L. Alford and Erik I. Asphaug and Justin A. Atchison and Andrew R. Badger and Paul Baki and Ronald-L. Ballouz and Dmitriy L. Bekker and Julie Bellerose and Shyam Bhaskaran and Bonnie J. Buratti and Saverio Cambioni and Michelle H. Chen and Steven R. Chesley and George Chiu and Gareth S. Collins and Matthew W. Cox and Mallory E. DeCoster and Peter S. Ericksen and Raymond C. Espiritu and Alan S. Faber and Tony L. Farnham and Fabio Ferrari and Zachary J. Fletcher and Robert W. Gaskell and Dawn M. Graninger and Musad A. Haque and Patricia A. Harrington-Duff and Sarah Hefter and Isabel Herreros and Masatoshi Hirabayashi and Philip M. Huang and Syau-Yun W. Hsieh and Seth A. Jacobson and Stephen N. Jenkins and Mark A. Jensenius and Jeremy W. John and Martin Jutzi and Tomas Kohout and Timothy O. Krueger and Frank E. Laipert and Norberto R. Lopez and Robert Luther and Alice Lucchetti and Declan M. Mages and Simone Marchi and Anna C. Martin and Maria E. McQuaide and Patrick Michel and Nicholas A. Moskovitz and Ian W. Murphy and Naomi Murdoch and Shantanu P. Naidu and Hari Nair and Michael C. Nolan and Jens Ormö and Maurizio Pajola and Eric E. Palmer and James M. Peachey and Petr Pravec and Sabina D. Raducan and K. T. Ramesh and Joshua R. Ramirez and Edward L. Reynolds and Joshua E. Richman and Colas Q. Robin and Luis M. Rodriguez and Lew M. Roufberg and Brian P. Rush and Carolyn A. Sawyer and Daniel J. Scheeres and Petr Scheirich and Stephen R. Schwartz and Matthew P. Shannon and Brett N. Shapiro and Caitlin E. Shearer and Evan J. Smith and R. Joshua Steele and Jordan K Steckloff and Angela M. Stickle and Jessica M. Sunshine and Emil A. Superfin and Zahi B. Tarzi and Cristina A. Thomas and Justin R. Thomas and Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez and B. Teresa Tropf and Andrew T. Vaughan and Dianna Velez and C. Dany Waller and Daniel S. Wilson and Kristin A. Wortman and Yun Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.02248},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
Accepted by Nature