Successful Kinetic Impact into an Asteroid for Planetary Defense
Creators: name: Daly, R. Terik
name: Ernst, Carolyn M.
name: Barnouin, Olivier S.
name: Chabot, Nancy L.
name: Rivkin, Andrew S.
name: Cheng, Andrew F.
name: Adams, Elena Y.
name: Agrusa, Harrison F.
name: Abel, Elisabeth D.
name: Alford, Amy L.
name: Asphaug, Erik I.
name: Atchison, Justin A.
name: Badger, Andrew R.
name: Baki, Paul
name: Ballouz, Ronald-L.
name: Bekker, Dmitriy L.
name: Bellerose, Julie
name: Bhaskaran, Shyam
name: Buratti, Bonnie J.
name: Cambioni, Saverio
name: Chen, Michelle H.
name: Chesley, Steven R.
name: Chiu, George
name: Collins, Gareth S.
name: Cox, Matthew W.
name: DeCoster, Mallory E.
name: Ericksen, Peter S.
name: Espiritu, Raymond C.
name: Faber, Alan S.
name: Farnham, Tony L.
name: Ferrari, Fabio
name: Fletcher, Zachary J.
name: Gaskell, Robert W.
name: Graninger, Dawn M.
name: Haque, Musad A.
name: Harrington-Duff, Patricia A.
name: Hefter, Sarah
name: Herreros, Isabel
name: Hirabayashi, Masatoshi
name: Huang, Philip M.
name: Hsieh, Syau-Yun W.
name: Jacobson, Seth A.
name: Jenkins, Stephen N.
name: Jensenius, Mark A.
name: John, Jeremy W.
name: Jutzi, Martin
name: Kohout, Tomas
name: Krueger, Timothy O.
name: Laipert, Frank E.
name: Lopez, Norberto R.
name: Luther, Robert
name: Lucchetti, Alice
name: Mages, Declan M.
name: Marchi, Simone
name: Martin, Anna C.
name: McQuaide, Maria E.
name: Michel, Patrick
name: Moskovitz, Nicholas A.
name: Murphy, Ian W.
name: Murdoch, Naomi
name: Naidu, Shantanu P.
name: Nair, Hari
name: Nolan, Michael C.
name: Ormö, Jens
name: Pajola, Maurizio
name: Palmer, Eric E.
name: Peachey, James M.
name: Pravec, Petr
name: Raducan, Sabina D.
name: Ramesh, K. T.
name: Ramirez, Joshua R.
name: Reynolds, Edward L.
name: Richman, Joshua E.
name: Robin, Colas Q.
name: Rodriguez, Luis M.
name: Roufberg, Lew M.
name: Rush, Brian P.
name: Sawyer, Carolyn A.
name: Scheeres, Daniel J.
name: Scheirich, Petr
name: Schwartz, Stephen R.
name: Shannon, Matthew P.
name: Shapiro, Brett N.
name: Shearer, Caitlin E.
name: Smith, Evan J.
name: Steele, R. Joshua
name: Steckloff, Jordan K
name: Stickle, Angela M.
name: Sunshine, Jessica M.
name: Superfin, Emil A.
name: Tarzi, Zahi B.
name: Thomas, Cristina A.
name: Thomas, Justin R.
name: Trigo-Rodríguez, Josep M.
name: Tropf, B. Teresa
name: Vaughan, Andrew T.
name: Velez, Dianna
name: Waller, C. Dany
name: Wilson, Daniel S.
name: Wortman, Kristin A.
name: Zhang, Yun
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: While no known asteroid poses a threat to Earth for at least the next century, the catalog of near-Earth asteroids is incomplete for objects whose impacts would produce regional devastation. Several approaches have been proposed to potentially prevent an asteroid impact with Earth by deflecting or disrupting an asteroid. A test of kinetic impact technology was identified as the highest priority space mission related to asteroid mitigation. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the first full-scale test of kinetic impact technology. The mission's target asteroid was Dimorphos, the secondary member of the S-type binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos. This binary asteroid system was chosen to enable ground-based telescopes to quantify the asteroid deflection caused by DART's impact. While past missions have utilized impactors to investigate the properties of small bodies those earlier missions were not intended to deflect their targets and did not achieve measurable deflections. Here we report the DART spacecraft's autonomous kinetic impact into Dimorphos and reconstruct the impact event, including the timeline leading to impact, the location and nature of the DART impact site, and the size and shape of Dimorphos. The successful impact of the DART spacecraft with Dimorphos and the resulting change in Dimorphos's orbit demonstrates that kinetic impactor technology is a viable technique to potentially defend Earth if necessary.
description: Accepted by Nature