Mercyhurst hosts watch party for NASA’s first asteroid redirection test

NASA will deploy the world’s first planetary defense test mission, intentionally slamming a half-ton spacecraft into an asteroid to redirect its orbital path, on Monday, Sept. 26.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, allows scientists to gauge the viability of this technique to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth were one to be discovered. The spacecraft was built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), with which Mercyhurst University’s Center for Intelligence Research Analysis and Training (CIRAT) maintains an academic partnership. As such, CIRAT will host a watch party to observe the historic event in its lab, which is housed in the Federal Resources Corp. Cyber Education Center at Mercyhurst. Live coverage begins at 6 p.m. EDT, with DART’s impact occurring at 7:14 p.m.

CIRAT, a nonprofit arm of Mercyhurst, develops opportunities with business and government entities through contracts, grants, and academic partnerships to professionalize the skills of students in its Intelligence Studies and Computer Information Science programs.

“Our academic partnership with APL began last year, initiated by an alumna of the Intel program who works there, Sophia Jensen,” said Brian Fuller, director of operations for the Ridge College of Intelligence Studies & Applied Sciences and CIRAT lab director. “We currently conduct internships with them and will be doing some CIRAT projects soon. They also provide great opportunities to participate in activities like these that benefit our students academically and professionally.”

The DART spacecraft launched on November 24, 2021. On Monday, it will use an autonomous guidance system to aim itself at the asteroid moonlet, Dimorphos, which poses no threat to Earth. It will strike at approximately 14,000 miles per hour (22,000 kilometers per hour), causing a small change in the asteroid’s motion, according to NASA. Telescopes on Earth will then measure the amount the asteroid is deflected by observing the change in the moonlet’s orbit around its larger asteroid, Didymos.

Since its early days, NASA has been tracking the movement of asteroids, knowing their impact has the potential to destroy life on an entire planet. On Feb. 15, 2013, an undetected asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, causing an airburst and shockwave that struck six cities around the region. The blast injured more than 1,600 people and caused an estimated $30 million in damage.

Fuller said interested persons can tune in to NASA TV, NASA YouTube, NASA Facebook and NASA Twitter to watch the live broadcast.

PHOTO: The DART spacecraft was built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), with which Mercyhurst maintains an academic partnership. The main structure of the spacecraft is a box roughly the size of a vending machine. APL designed and built DART along with the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO).