The Liverpool engineer part of NASA’s “mind-blowing” experiment to redirect an asteroid
Dr Stefania Soldini provided expertise to a historic NASA experiment that saw a spacecraft intentionally crash into an asteroid as part of a mission to protect Earth against deadly asteroids.
The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is imvestigating a new asteroid defection technique known as kinetic impact by deliberately colliding a simple, unmanned spacecraft into the moonlet of a binary asteroid system called Dimorphos, located 11 million km away from Earth, in order to change the object’s motion around a larger asteroid called Didymos.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL
The DART mission is the world’s first full-scale planetary defence test, demonstrating one method of asteroid defection technology. It is investigating new technologies and providing important data to enhance NASA’s modelling and predictive capabilities in order to learn more about how we might deflect an asteroid off-course to avoid it striking Earth.
Dr Soldini modelled the evolution of the ejecta particles and the internal structure of Didymos from gravity measurements.
Dr Soldini said: “I am extremely excited to be part of this NASA mission, which is the first such mission of its kind. DART is a fascinating and mind-blowing experiment to see whether intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course, and this could be a useful technique should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future.
“Studying how the ejecta particles behave after impact helps us to better estimate the effect of the impact, and the gravity and composition of the Didymos system. It also adds an important piece to the puzzle of our understanding of asteroids in general.”
Ground observations will estimate changes in the Dimorphos’ motion after impact however a thorough mapping of the two objects won’t take place until the European Space Agency spacecraft HERA arrives at the scene to survey the damage in early 2027 and confirm the asteroid’s trajectory changes. Dr Soldini is also a member of the HERA mission group.
You can watch the test impact here on NASA TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RA8Tfa6Sck
Read Dr Soldini’s article on NASA DART mission for `The Conversation’ > Can we really deflect an asteroid by crashing into it? Nobody knows, but we are excited to try
Dr Soldini was awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for the REMORA project – REndezvous Mission for Orbital Reconstruction of Asteroids: A fleet of Self-driven CubeSats for Tracking and Characterising Asteroids in partnership with Citadel Space Systems.
This project aims to develop a fleet of self-driven small satellites that will be sent out into the solar system to track and analyse asteroids. This will provide vital data about possible threats to Earth, helping to develop mitigation against the risk of impact.