DART Mission

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards.
It is launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

What is relevance of DART Mission?

The DART mission will test a method that could be used to redirect asteroids that pose a threat to our planet.
Using the impact of a massive object like a spacecraft to divert asteroids is called the “kinetic impact method” of asteroid impact avoidance.

Why is the crash of DART with Dimorphos important?

The 160-meter-wide asteroid Dimorphos orbits the much larger asteroid Didymos, which is about 780 meters wide. After DART crashes into Dimorphos, it will ever so slightly change the way that it orbits Didymos.
Telescopes on our planet and in space– including the Webb Telescope and Hubble– will train on this asteroid system to take measurements of the changes in the system.
While Dimorphos poses no actual threat to Earth. Scientists will compare the data from DART’s actual impact with the many computer-generated simulations they have already made. This will help ascertain whether the kinetic impact method will be effective as a mitigation strategy in the event of an actual asteroid threat.

What was NASA’s mission?

NASA, to put it simply, undertook the ‘kick’ technique.
Compared to the massive Dimorphos, DART is a tiny Goliath. Yet crashing at a breakneck speed of 23,760 kilometres per hour, the momentum is adequate to slash the angular momentum of Dimorphos, making it speed up and move closer to Didymos.
Consider it like this: a fast-moving moped slamming into a truck is sure to undergo a massive crash and burn, yet will veer the massive truck a bit. This is the essence of the ‘kick’ technique.

What has been the impact assessment?

The DART craft carried a high-resolution DRACO (Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation) camera to observe the collision and its consequences.
The close-up images until its fatal crash are being analyse.
Astronomers will now spend weeks and months observing the periodic change in the brightness using the telescopes to tease out the altered orbital period.

Other possibilities of this technique:-

Space Mining:

Mining rare earth elements comes with a high environmental cost.
In the coming years, the penalty for polluting could make space mining economically viable.
If one can tug a mineral-rich asteroid near the Moon or establish a space mining factory between the orbits of earth and Mars, precious mineral resources required for decades could be easily sourced.
The ‘kick’ technique that deflects asteroids can be use to move a small asteroid into a convenient position for space mining.
In a way, the DART mission is also part of this frame.

Green Energy:

Space mining will be helpful for developing green energy technologies.

It will help reduce the cost output ratio and equipment costs such as electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, and energy storage devices – and ushering in the low carbon economy of the future.

Rare earth elements such as yttrium, niobium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and scandium which are critical to develop green technology will be easily available.

They are short in supply, and asteroid mining, it is believe could solve the rare earth supply problem.