DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) and Planetary Defense

Organizer

Austrian Academy of Sciences

What can we do against existential asteroid threats to Earth? One answer is to deflect the asteroid, altering its path to miss Earth entirely.

The DART mission is NASA's first space test of this approach, impacting an asteroid to adjust its speed and path. The spacecraft launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in November of 2021, and successfully impacted its target, an asteroid called Dimorphos, on September of 2022. The impact altered the orbit of Dimorphos by 32 minutes and displaced over one million kilograms of rock into space.

DART also carried a small CubeSat from the Italian Space Agency, LICIACube, which flew by the asteroid three minutes after the impact and observed the resulting ejecta.

Currently, scientists around the world are using ground and space-based telescopes to look at the evolving dusty tail of Dimorphos, and are working to understand what does DART's success mean for the future of the planetary defense. The DART mission is managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA.

This public event at the Austrian Academy of Sciences is organized in conjunction with the 8th International Planetary Defense Conference, which is held in Vienna from April 3 to 7, 2023.

Further information about the event

• 4:30 Welcome
  Christian Köberl, Chair and Moderation
• 4:45 Lectues and Discussion
  • Impacts on Earth and in the Solar System
    Christian Köberl, Chair, Commission for Geosciences and Deputy Chair,
    Commission for Astronomy, Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) & University of Vienna
  • Planetary Defense at NASA: Defending planet Earth one rock at a time
    Lindley Johnson, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), USA
  • Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART): What does it take to impact an asteroid?
    Elena Adams, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, USA
  • DART Post-Impact: What have we learned about deflecting asteroids?
    Nancy Chabot, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, USA
  • Die ESA Mission Hera: Wie sehen Didymos und Dimorphos nach dem Einschlag von DART aus?
    Michael Kueppers, European Space Agency (ESA), Germany
• 7:15 Reception

Target Audience

Interested public

Participant Information

The event will be held in English and German.

Online-Registration

Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW)
Commission for Geosciences (GEOK)
Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2
A-1010 Vienna

Dr. Viktor J. Bruckman
Tel.: +43 (1) 51 581-3200
E-mail: viktor.bruckman@oeaw.ac.at