September 2019
A new era in planetary defence missions
... 10 percent. The speedy DART spacecraft, equipped with LICIACube as a companion, will capture images to determine the shape of Didymos B but will not be able to determine the moonlet’s mass. Without such data, researchers cannot estimate exactly...
22 November 2021
NASA's asteroid impact mission due to launch Wednesday
... head on a 10 month journey to Dimorphos, a small moonlet asteroid that orbits a larger companion asteroid called Didymos. Didymos – which means "twin" in Greek – was discovered on 11 April, 1996, by researcher Joseph Montani of Spacewatch at Kitt...
24 November 2021
NASA successfully launches its DART mission
... asteroids and comets that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit.” The spacecraft will intercept the Didymos system between 26 September and 1 October, 2022, intentionally slamming into Dimorphos at roughly 6 kilometres per second. Scientists...
October 2015
Taking AIM with ESA: proposing the first visit to a binary asteroid system
... measurements of the larger asteroid will be made when the opportunity arises. AIM will not long be alone at Didymos, however: an important conjunction is anticipated. A second NASA-led spacecraft will arrive approximately four months after AIM...
January 2020
Small body missions unveil interplanetary secrets
... testing the effectiveness of the kinetic impactor technique. The target asteroid is the binary Didymos, comprising Didymos A (about 780 m across) and the 160 m Didymos B. This is the perfect pair for this experiment, since the results of hitting...
September 2016
Preparing the future: the right technology at the right time
... advanced onboard autonomy, laser communications, inter-satellite links and low-gravity operations, while exploring the Didymos binary asteroid system and monitoring the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft with the smaller of the two...
