DART Asteroid Deflecting Spacecraft Hockey Puck

DART or Double Asteroid Redirection Test is the first of what may become a fleet of planetary defense spacecraft to keep us from the fate of the dinosaurs. DART doesn’t obliterate asteroids. Instead, it crashes head-on with the threatening space rock to deflect it by changing its speed so that the asteroid will miss the Earth. DART uses an onboard camera and navigation software to autonomously zero in on the moving target. Another new technology on-board is the Xenon thruster, a solar electric propulsion system that takes the place of conventional chemical rockets. The first target for DART is the moonlet of Didymos, called Dimorphos, which is about 150 meters in diameter and orbiting the larger asteroid. That impact successfully took place on September 26, 2022.