It is a big day for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Monday, September 26, as it is the day when its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is expected to smash into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos.
The space agency is confident that everything will go to plan and you can watch it happen online. If you are wondering how you can go about it, we are about to tell you how!
NASA's DART Mission to Slam Into Dimorphos
But before we talk about how to watch everything unfold on Monday, let us first discuss the mission itself.
Launched in November 2021, the DART mission's goal is to see if it is possible to change the course an asteroid is currently on.
The target of the mission is asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, which is located around 700 million miles away from our planet and is around 560 feet wide. It is part of the same binary system as Didymos, which it actually orbits.
Should the DART mission succeed, "shift Dimorphos' orbital period enough to alter its gravitational effects on the larger Didymos, changing the trajectory of the pair," according to a report by Space.
What Happens If the DART Mission Fails?
While NASA is confident that the DART mission will slam into Dimorphos as planned, there will always be a possibility that things may go wrong and the spacecraft misses its target. So what happens then?
Per the report by Space, the DART team will first process the available data that has been collected by the mission. Once that has been done, the team will then consider other space objects that the spacecraft can slam into instead.
How to Watch the DART Mission Online
Want to see what happens when a spacecraft slams into an asteroid? Well, there are a couple of ways you can do so.
First, according to a separate report by Space, NASA will provide live coverage of the mission via NASA TV, NASA's official website, and of course, the space agency's social media pages.
"The DART probe's sole instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), will beam back approximately one image per second as it approaches its target, which NASA will share both in a dedicated livestream and in a broadcast event," the report states.
However, it should be noted that if the mission is successful, the camera will cease its broadcast because it has already slammed into Dimorphos.
If you want to watch the whole mission, including the aftermath of the impact, you can do so via the Virtual Telescope Project's website, accordingt to Space. This has been made possible due to the partnership between Virtual Telescope Project with two South African observatories: Klein Karoo Observatory and the Mahikeng Astronomical Observatory.
The livestream begins at 6:30 p.m. EDT on Monday.
