Successful kinetic impact into an asteroid for planetary defence

Although no known asteroid poses a threat to Earth for at least the next century, the catalogue of near-Earth asteroids is incomplete for objects whose impacts would produce regional devastation 1 , 2 . Several approaches have been proposed to potentially prevent an asteroid impact with Earth by def...

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Published in:	Nature (London) Vol. 616; no. 7957; pp. 443 - 447
Main Authors:	Daly, R. Terik, Ernst, Carolyn M., Barnouin, Olivier S., Chabot, Nancy L., Rivkin, Andrew S., Cheng, Andrew F., Adams, Elena Y., Agrusa, Harrison F., Abel, Elisabeth D., Alford, Amy L., Asphaug, Erik I., Atchison, Justin A., Badger, Andrew R., Baki, Paul, Ballouz, Ronald-L., Bekker, Dmitriy L., Bellerose, Julie, Bhaskaran, Shyam, Buratti, Bonnie J., Cambioni, Saverio, Chen, Michelle H., Chesley, Steven R., Chiu, George, Collins, Gareth S., Cox, Matthew W., DeCoster, Mallory E., Ericksen, Peter S., Espiritu, Raymond C., Faber, Alan S., Farnham, Tony L., Ferrari, Fabio, Fletcher, Zachary J., Gaskell, Robert W., Graninger, Dawn M., Haque, Musad A., Harrington-Duff, Patricia A., Hefter, Sarah, Herreros, Isabel, Hirabayashi, Masatoshi, Huang, Philip M., Hsieh, Syau-Yun W., Jacobson, Seth A., Jenkins, Stephen N., Jensenius, Mark A., John, Jeremy W., Jutzi, Martin, Kohout, Tomas, Krueger, Timothy O., Laipert, Frank E., Lopez, Norberto R., Luther, Robert, Lucchetti, Alice, Mages, Declan M., Marchi, Simone, Martin, Anna C., McQuaide, Maria E., Michel, Patrick, Moskovitz, Nicholas A., Murdoch, Naomi, Naidu, Shantanu P., Nair, Hari, Nolan, Michael C., Ormö, Jens, Pajola, Maurizio, Palmer, Eric E., Peachey, James M., Pravec, Petr, Raducan, Sabina D., Ramesh, K. T., Ramirez, Joshua R., Reynolds, Edward L., Richman, Joshua E., Robin, Colas Q., Rodriguez, Luis M., Roufberg, Lew M., Rush, Brian P., Sawyer, Carolyn A., Scheeres, Daniel J., Scheirich, Petr, Schwartz, Stephen R., Shannon, Matthew P., Shapiro, Brett N., Shearer, Caitlin E., Smith, Evan J., Steele, R. Joshua, Steckloff, Jordan K., Stickle, Angela M., Sunshine, Jessica M., Superfin, Emil A., Tarzi, Zahi B., Thomas, Cristina A., Thomas, Justin R., Trigo-Rodríguez, Josep M., Tropf, B. Teresa, Vaughan, Andrew T., Velez, Dianna, Waller, C. Dany, Wilson, Daniel S., Wortman, Kristin A., Zhang, Yun
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Nature Publishing Group UK 20-04-2023 Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:	639/33/445/848 639/33/445/849 Asteroid collisions Asteroid deflection Asteroid impact Asteroid missions Asteroids Astrophysics Binary system Earth Full scale tests Humanities and Social Sciences Impactors multidisciplinary Near-Earth Objects Planetary defense Porosity Science Science (multidisciplinary) Sciences of the Universe Space missions Spacecraft Telescopes
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Summary:	Although no known asteroid poses a threat to Earth for at least the next century, the catalogue of near-Earth asteroids is incomplete for objects whose impacts would produce regional devastation 1 , 2 . Several approaches have been proposed to potentially prevent an asteroid impact with Earth by deflecting or disrupting an asteroid 1 – 3 . A test of kinetic impact technology was identified as the highest-priority space mission related to asteroid mitigation 1 . NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is a 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 the impact of the DART spacecraft 4 . Although past missions have utilized impactors to investigate the properties of small bodies 5 , 6 , 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 the orbit of Dimorphos 7 demonstrates that kinetic impactor technology is a viable technique to potentially defend Earth if necessary. The impact of the DART spacecraft on the asteroid Dimorphos is reported and reconstructed, demonstrating that kinetic impactor technology is a viable technique to potentially defend Earth from asteroids.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0028-0836 1476-4687
DOI:	10.1038/s41586-023-05810-5