NASA's DART spacecraft will crash into the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26 at 7:14 p.m. EDT. Here's how the day will unfold.
A NASA spacecraft will soon make history when it crashes into an asteroid in the world's first planetary defense test. , will slam a spacecraft into the tiny moon of the asteroid Didymos on. If all goes well, the spacecraft will hit the moonlet, called Dimorphos, and snap images until the moment of impact.in real time. Read on for a handy guide on when it will all happen.
DART's target Dimorphos is about 560 feet wide and orbits its larger parent Didymos once every 11 hours and 55 minutes. The asteroids are about 7 million miles from Earth and pose no risk of impacting our planet, NASA has said. DART should hit Dimorphos while traveling at about 14,760 mph . Here's what DART's last day will be like.While the stage was set for NASA's DART asteroid impact with, the space rock impact action really starts to heat up in the final 24 hours.
About four hours before impact, the DART spacecraft will enter what mission scientists call its"terminal phase." The spacecraft's DRACO camera should be locked on the Didymos asteroid and looking for its moon Dimorphos.