Tonight, NASA will smash a spacecraft into an asteroid on purpose. Here's the background behind the DART mission.
Dimorphos is a moonlet asteroid that orbits a larger asteroid known as Didymos. Until now, the moonlet has gone by cute nicknames only, like “Didymoon,” or the ugly designation “S/2003 1.” Its new moniker, Dimorphos, is Greek for “having two forms,” in honor of the two different trajectories it will have before and after the spacecraft knocks it askew.
Dimorphos currently orbits Didymos once every 12 hours. By hitting it with DART, “you’re actually changing the orbital period enough — by, say, 10 minutes or 20 minutes — which could be observed even from the ground,” Tsiganis says. Telescopes on Earth will track the immediate aftermath of the crash, and the European Space Agency will send its Hera probe to Dimorphos in 2024 to ensure that the moonlet asteroid is following its new intended path.
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