Press Release
DART Gets Its Wings: Spacecraft Integrated with Innovative Solar Array Technology and Camera
Perched atop a stand in the middle of a high-ceilinged clean room, DART is beginning to look like the intrepid spacecraft that will aim itself directly into an asteroid next fall. With the addition of its compact Roll-Out Solar Arrays (ROSA) coiled into two gold cylinders that flank the sides of the spacecraft, and its less visible but still integral imager, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical (DRACO) navigation tucked safely beneath its panels, the spacecraft is close to fully integrated.
This mix of current and new technologies, some of which it will demonstrate for the first time, will see DART through its 10-month journey toward its asteroid target.
NASA’s DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is a carefully planned demonstration that will help determine whether kinetic impactor technology — flying a spacecraft directly into a small solar system body at speeds of about 15,000 miles per hour with the intention of changing its course — can serve as a reliable method of asteroid deflection in the event that such a hazard ever heads for Earth. NASA is constantly monitoring the skies and has already identified nearly 40% of potentially hazardous asteroids larger than 140 meters (459 feet) in size, none of which are slated to impact our planet, including the binary system selected for this first-ever deflection test.
But to prove that our planet can expect the unexpected, the DART mission will set out to push an asteroid and safely change its motion in space. For the last two years, the spacecraft destined for this undertaking has been developed and built at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. APL, which leads the mission for NASA, is now putting the finishing touches on the spacecraft.