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The very first time NASA planetary defense mission is preparing to launch in June 2021, ensuring that all the pieces are in place for the spaceship to slide successfully into the small "moon" of a binary asteroid.
This mission, called the Double asteroid redirection test (DART)will culminate in October 2022 with the long-awaited impact of the binary asteroid Didymos. But the mission staff has a lot to do to keep it busy by then and he knows he will be in the spotlight as the mission continues. This is partly because DART represents NASA's first foray beyond the scientific and human flight missions; Instead, this mission will test a technology that could theoretically save the Earth from a dangerous collision with a threatening asteroid.
"People can really get into the whole thing, 'Oh my God, are you trying to move what?'," Said Elena Adams, of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, at Space.com. Conference on Planetary Defense of the International Academy of Astronautics, held earlier this month in College Park, Maryland. Adams is the Mission System Engineer for DART. "I think people are very excited too, because they would not want to be dinosaurs."
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As a mission systems engineer, Adams' job is to communicate and coordinate the different parts of the DART mission – from the probe to the launch vehicle, to the way team members work. together during the mission.
The rocket is a key recent development of this equation. The DART team had assumed that the craft would be on a launcher, which would have lengthened the journey from Earth to Didymos, but NASA decided to buy a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch dedicated to the mission.
"Before, we had to spend a lot of time circling the Earth, we did not know where we were going to be," Adams said. "Now we have a dedicated launch vehicle and we can just go where we want to go."
As a result of this decision, Adams and his colleagues meet with SpaceX this month to begin coordinating the launch, which will take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in June 2021.
Adams is also considering a series of milestones for the mission this year. Final DART Review by NASA will take place in June. The spacecraft's parts will also begin to gather this summer, with the body of the probe scheduled to arrive at the Applied Physics Laboratory in June to be tested. Then, the spacecraft will leave to recover its propulsion system, a new electric ion engine that DART will test.
Unlike traditional NASA missions, which are bursting with scientific devices, DART will only carry one instrument, an advanced camera, which will capture the approach from a spacecraft's point of view. "It will take amazing pictures along the way," Adams said. "But really, it's a targeting camera." For now, the main priority of this camera is to ensure that the complicated deployment solar panels that the mission will test do not interfere with the camera images.
And then, of course, there is the people component, which ensures that the mission team is ready to step up to the approach of the DART target in October 2022.
"These past 10 days you must have staff available 24 hours a day. It's a small mission. We are just a few," Adams said. "So, we are trying to determine what is the best way to perform all the maneuvers and what do we do in case of an emergency?
Email Meghan Bartels to [email protected] or follow her @meghanbartels. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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