Asteroid Smashing DART Mission Sends Back First Image

One of the most interesting missions that NASA has attempted in a long time is the DART mission. DART is a mission designed to see if we can deflect the path of an asteroid if one ever poses a threat to the earth. The spacecraft will eventually be smashed into a small asteroid orbiting a larger asteroid. The results will be measured to see if a kinetic impactor is a viable way to redirect an asteroid.

Before the asteroid makes its collision, it has a significant amount of distance to cover. On December 7, DART opened the cover protecting its DRACO telescopic camera. The camera then snapped the first image of the environment around the spacecraft and shared it with scientists on Earth.

The image doesn’t show much, with only a few stars seen in the vast blackness of space. The image was taken when the spacecraft was about 2 million miles from Earth.

Images of the stars are used to determine how the DRACO camera was oriented relative to the spacecraft. The images are also used to characterize any optical imperfections and calibrate how bright an object is. DART will reach its target on September 26, 2022.