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DART impact might have reshaped Hera's target asteroid
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By European Space Agency
In 2022 NASA’s DART spacecraft made history, and changed the Solar System forever, by impacting the Dimorphos asteroid and measurably shifting its orbit around the larger Didymos asteroid. In the process a plume of debris was thrown out into space.
The latest modelling, available on the preprint server arXiv and accepted for publication in the September volume of The Planetary Science Journal, shows how small meteoroids from that debris could eventually reach both Mars and Earth – potentially in an observable (although quite safe) manner.
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A mirror that was later installed inside the telescope for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor shows a reflection of principal optical engineer Brian Monacelli during an inspection of the mirror’s surface at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on July 17.NASA/JPL-Caltech A technician operates articulating equipment to rotate NEO Surveyor’s aluminum optical bench — part of the spacecraft’s telescope — in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on July 17.NASA/JPL-Caltech The mirrors for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope are being installed and aligned, and work on other spacecraft components is accelerating.
NASA’s new asteroid-hunting spacecraft is taking shape at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Called NEO Surveyor (Near-Earth Object Surveyor), this cutting-edge infrared space telescope will seek out the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to our planet. In fact, it is the agency’s first space telescope designed specifically for planetary defense.
Targeting launch in late 2027, the spacecraft will travel a million miles to a region of gravitational stability — called the L1 Lagrange point — between Earth and the Sun. From there, its large sunshade will block the glare and heat of sunlight, allowing the mission to discover and track near-Earth objects as they approach Earth from the direction of the Sun, which is difficult for other observatories to do. The space telescope also may reveal asteroids called Earth Trojans, which lead and trail our planet’s orbit and are difficult to see from the ground or from Earth orbit.
NEO Surveyor relies on cutting-edge detectors that observe two bands of infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. Near-Earth objects, no matter how dark, glow brightly in infrared as the Sun heats them. Because of this, the telescope will be able to find dark asteroids and comets, which don’t reflect much visible light. It also will measure those objects, a challenging task for visible-light telescopes that have a hard time distinguishing between small, highly reflective objects and large, dark ones.
This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s NEO Surveyor in deep space. The black-paneled angular structure in the belly of the spacecraft is the instrument enclosure that is being built at JPL. The mission’s infrared telescope will be installed inside the enclosure.NASA/JPL-Caltech “NEO Surveyor is optimized to help us to do one specific thing: enable humanity to find the most hazardous asteroids and comets far enough in advance so we can do something about them,” said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for NEO Surveyor and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We aim to build a spacecraft that can find, track, and characterize the objects with the greatest chance of hitting Earth. In the process, we will learn a lot about their origins and evolution.”
Coming Into Focus
The spacecraft’s only instrument is its telescope. About the size of a washer-and-dryer set, the telescope’s blocky aluminum body, called the optical bench, was built in a JPL clean room. Known as a three-mirror anastigmat telescope, it will rely on curved mirrors to focus light onto its infrared detectors in such a way that minimizes optical aberrations.
“We have been carefully managing the fabrication of the spacecraft’s telescope mirrors, all of which were received in the JPL clean room by July,” said Brian Monacelli, principal optical engineer at JPL. “Its mirrors were shaped and polished from solid aluminum using a diamond-turning machine. Each exceeds the mission’s performance requirements.”
Monacelli inspected the mirror surfaces for debris and damage, then JPL’s team of optomechanical technicians and engineers attached the mirrors to the telescope’s optical bench in August. Next, they will measure the telescope’s performance and align its mirrors.
Complementing the mirror assembly are the telescope’s mercury-cadmium-telluride detectors, which are similar to the detectors used by NASA’s recently retired NEOWISE (short for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission. An advantage of these detectors is that they don’t necessarily require cryogenic coolers or cryogens to lower their operational temperatures in order to detect infrared wavelengths. Cryocoolers and cryogens can limit the lifespan of a spacecraft. NEO Surveyor will instead keep its cool by using its large sunshade to block sunlight from heating the telescope and by occupying an orbit beyond that of the Moon, minimizing heating from Earth.
The telescope will eventually be installed inside the spacecraft’s instrument enclosure, which is being assembled in JPL’s historic High Bay 1 clean room where NASA missions such as Voyager, Cassini, and Perseverance were constructed. Fabricated from dark composite material that allows heat to escape, the enclosure will help keep the telescope cool and prevent its own heat from obscuring observations.
Once it is completed in coming weeks, the enclosure will be tested to make sure it can withstand the rigors of space exploration. Then it will be mounted on the back of the sunshade and atop the electronic systems that will power and control the spacecraft.
“The entire team has been working hard for a long time to get to this point, and we are excited to see the hardware coming together with contributions from our institutional and industrial collaborators from across the country,” said Tom Hoffman, NEO Surveyor’s project manager at JPL. “From the panels and cables for the instrument enclosure to the detectors and mirrors for the telescope — as well as components to build the spacecraft — hardware is being fabricated, delivered, and assembled to build this incredible observatory.”
Assembly of NEO Surveyor can be viewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via JPL’s live cam.
More About NEO Surveyor
The NEO Surveyor mission marks a major step for NASA toward reaching its U.S. Congress-mandated goal to discover and characterize at least 90% of the near-Earth objects more than 460 feet (140 meters) across that come within 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) of our planet’s orbit. Objects of this size can cause significant regional damage, or worse, should they impact the Earth.
The mission is tasked by NASA’s Planetary Science Division within the Science Mission Directorate; program oversight is provided by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which was established in 2016 to manage the agency’s ongoing efforts in planetary defense. NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center provides program management for NEO Surveyor.
The project is being developed by JPL and is led by principal investigator Amy Mainzer at UCLA. Established aerospace and engineering companies have been contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation, including BAE Systems, Space Dynamics Laboratory, and Teledyne. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder will support operations, and IPAC-Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for processing survey data and producing the mission’s data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
More information about NEO Surveyor is available at:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor
News Media Contacts
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600 / 202-358-1501
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 28, 2024 Related Terms
NEO Surveyor (Near-Earth Object Surveyor Space Telescope) Comets Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Planetary Defense Planetary Defense Coordination Office Explore More
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By NASA
As part of an asteroid sample exchange, NASA has transferred to JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) a portion of the asteroid Bennu sample collected by the agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission. The sample was officially handed over by NASA officials during a ceremony on Aug. 22 at JAXA’s Sagamihara, Japan, campus.
The signature exchange for the Bennu sample transfer took place on Aug. 22, 2024, at JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Sagamihara Campus.JAXA This asteroid sample transfer follows the November 2021 exchange where JAXA transferred to NASA a portion of the sample retrieved from asteroid Ryugu by its Hayabusa2 spacecraft. This agreement allows NASA and JAXA to share achievements and promote scientific and technological cooperation on asteroid sample return missions. The scientific goals of the two missions are to understand the origins and histories of primitive, organic-rich asteroids and what role they may have played in the formation of the planets.
“We value our continued collaboration with JAXA on asteroid sample return missions to both increase our science return and reduce risk on these and other missions,” said Kathleen Vander Kaaden, chief scientist for astromaterials curation in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “JAXA has extensive curation capabilities, and we look forward to what we will learn from the shared analysis of the OSIRIS-REx samples.”
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft delivered 4.29 ounces (121.6 grams) of material from Bennu, more than double the mission’s mass requirement, as well as 24 steel Velcro® pads containing dust from the contact with Bennu. As part of the agreement, the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston transferred to JAXA 0.023 ounces (0.66 grams) of the Bennu sample, equaling 0.55% of the total sample mass, and one of the 24 contact pads.
Hayabusa2 collected 0.19 ounces (5.4 grams) of Ryugu between two samples and, in 2021, JAXA provided NASA with 23 millimeter-sized grains plus aggregate sample material from Ryugu, enabling both countries to get the most out of the samples and share the responsibility of sample curation.
JAXA’s portion of the Bennu samples will be housed in the newly expanded clean rooms in the extraterrestrial sample curation center on the JAXA Sagamihara campus. The JAXA team received the samples enclosed in non-reactive nitrogen gas and will open them in similarly nitrogen-filled clean chambers, accessed with air-tight gloves. JAXA will now work to create an initial description of the sample, including weight measurements, imaging with both visible light and infrared light microscopes, and infrared spectroscopy. The sample will then be distributed through a competitively selected process for detailed analysis at other research institutes to study the differences and similarities between asteroids Bennu and Ryugu.
JAXA “Thank you for safely bringing the precious asteroid samples from Bennu to Earth and then to Japan,” said Tomohiro Usui, Astromaterials Science Research Group Manager, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, JAXA. “As fellow curators, we understand the tension and responsibility that accompany these tasks. Now, it is our turn at JAXA. We will go ahead with our plans to derive significant scientific outcomes from these valuable samples.”
Asteroids are debris left over from the dawn of the solar system. The Sun and its planets formed from a cloud of dust and gas about 4.6 billion years ago, and asteroids are thought to date back to the first few million years of our solar system’s history. Sample return missions like OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 help provide new data on how the solar system’s evolution unfolded.
Initial analysis of the Bennu samples has revealed dust rich in carbon and nitrogen. Members of the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team have also found evidence of organic molecules and minerals bearing phosphorous and water, which together could indicate the building blocks essential for life.
Both the Bennu sample and the asteroid Ryugu sample delivered by JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission appear to have come from an ancient parent object formed beyond the current orbit of Saturn that was broken up and transported into the inner solar system. The differences between these asteroids are emerging as the detailed chemistry is analyzed.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA Johnson. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Find more information about NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission at:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex
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News Media Contacts
Wynn Scott
NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-910-6835
wynn.b.scott@nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
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By NASA
2 min read
NASA’s DART Team Earns AIAA Space Systems Award for Pioneering Mission
NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission continues to yield scientific discoveries and garner accolades for its groundbreaking achievements. The mission team was recently recognized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)with the 2024 Space Systems Award during this year’s AIAA ASCEND event, held July 29 to Aug. 2 in Las Vegas.
APL’s Geffrey Ottman (left), electrical systems engineer on NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) and APL’s Betsy Congdon (center), who served as the mechanical systems engineer on the mission, accepted the 2024 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space Systems Award on behalf of the team during this year’s AIAA ASCEND event, which was held from July 29 to Aug. 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Credit: AIAA The award, presented by the AIAA Space Systems Technical Committee, celebrates outstanding achievements in the architecture, analysis, design and implementation of space systems. The DART team was lauded for “outstanding achievement in the development and operation of the DART spacecraft, completing humanity’s first in-space demonstration of planetary defense technology.”
Designed, built and operated for NASA by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, the DART spacecraft was launched in 2021 and, roughly 10 months later, successfully impacted the asteroid Dimorphos in the fall of 2022. The deliberate collision altered the asteroid’s orbit around its larger companion asteroid, Didymos, by 33 minutes. That historic achievement showcased the potential to divert hazardous asteroids, offering a critical tool for safeguarding Earth from real possible impacts in the future.
The Space Systems Award has regularly recognized extraordinary achievements in space system design and implementation. The DART mission joins a distinguished list of past recipients who have significantly advanced the field of aerospace science and technology.
APL managed the DART mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office. NASA provided support for the mission from several centers, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Johnson Space Center in Houston; Glenn Research Center in Cleveland; and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
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Last Updated Aug 21, 2024 Editor Bill Keeter Related Terms
DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) Planetary Defense Coordination Office View the full article
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By NASA
This final image captured by NASA’s NEOWISE shows part of the Fornax constellation in the Southern Hemisphere. Processed by IPAC at Caltech, this is the mission’s 26,886,704th exposure. It was taken by the spacecraft just before 3 a.m. EDT on Aug. 1, when the mission’s survey ended.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/UCLA Engineers on NASA’s NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission commanded the spacecraft to turn its transmitter off for the last time Thursday. This concludes more than 10 years of its planetary defense mission to search for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth.
The final command was sent from the Earth Orbiting Missions Operation Center at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, with mission members past and present in attendance alongside officials from the agency’s headquarters in Washington. NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System then relayed the signal to NEOWISE, decommissioning the spacecraft. As NASA previously shared, the spacecraft’s science survey ended on July 31, and all remaining science data was downlinked from the spacecraft.
“The NEOWISE mission has been an extraordinary success story as it helped us better understand our place in the universe by tracking asteroids and comets that could be hazardous for us on Earth,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “While we are sad to see this brave mission come to an end, we are excited for the future scientific discoveries it has opened by setting the foundation for the next generation planetary defense telescope.”
NASA ended the mission because NEOWISE will soon drop too low in its orbit around Earth to provide usable science data. An uptick in solar activity is heating the upper atmosphere, causing it to expand and create drag on the spacecraft, which does not have a propulsion system to keep it in orbit. Now decommissioned, NEOWISE is expected to safely burn up in our planet’s atmosphere in late 2024.
During its operational lifetime, the infrared survey telescope exceeded scientific objectives for not one but two missions, starting with the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission. Managed by JPL, WISE launched in December 2009 with a seven-month mission to scan the entire infrared sky. By July 2010, WISE had accomplished this with far greater sensitivity than previous surveys. A few months later, the telescope ran out of the coolant that kept heat produced by the spacecraft from interfering with its infrared observations. (Invisible to the human eye, infrared wavelengths are associated with heat.)
NASA extended the mission under the name NEOWISE until February 2011 to complete a survey of the main belt asteroids, at which point the spacecraft was put into hibernation. Analysis of this data showed that although the lack of coolant meant the space telescope could no longer observe the faintest infrared objects in the universe, it could still make precise observations of asteroids and comets that generate a strong infrared signal from being heated by the Sun as they travel past our planet.
NASA brought the telescope out of hibernation in 2013 under the Near-Earth Object Observations Program, a precursor for the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, to continue the NEOWISE survey of asteroids and comets in the pursuit of planetary defense.
“The NEOWISE mission has been instrumental in our quest to map the skies and understand the near-Earth environment. Its huge number of discoveries have expanded our knowledge of asteroids and comets, while also boosting our nation’s planetary defense,” said Laurie Leshin, director, NASA JPL. “As we bid farewell to NEOWISE, we also celebrate the team behind it for their impressive achievements.”
By repeatedly observing the sky from low Earth orbit, NEOWISE created all-sky maps featuring 1.45 million infrared measurements of more than 44,000 solar system objects. Of the 3,000-plus near-Earth objects it detected, 215 were first spotted by NEOWISE. The mission also discovered 25 new comets, including the famed comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE that streaked across the night sky in the summer of 2020.
In addition to leaving behind a trove of science data, the spacecraft has helped inform the development of NASA’s first infrared space telescope purpose-built for detecting near-Earth objects: NEO Surveyor.
“The NEOWISE mission has provided a unique, long-duration data set of the infrared sky that will be used by scientists for decades to come,” said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for both NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But its additional legacy is that it has helped lay the groundwork for NASA’s next planetary defense infrared space telescope.”
Also managed by JPL, NEO Surveyor will seek out some of the hardest-to-find near-Earth objects, such as dark asteroids and comets that don’t reflect much visible light, as well as objects that approach Earth from the direction of the Sun. The next-generation infrared space telescope will greatly enhance the capabilities of the international planetary defense community, which includes NASA-funded ground surveys. Construction of NEO Surveyor is already well under way, with a launch date set for no earlier than 2027.
More Mission Information
The NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor missions support the objectives of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office at the agency’s headquarters. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 directed NASA to discover and characterize at least 90% of the near-Earth objects more than 460 feet (140 meters) across that come within 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) of our planet’s orbit. Objects of this size can cause significant regional damage, or worse, should they impact the Earth.
NASA JPL manages and operates the NEOWISE mission for the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the Science Mission Directorate. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. BAE Systems of Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science data processing, archiving, and distribution is done at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
To learn more about NEOWISE, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/neowise
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Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 08, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
NEOWISE Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA Headquarters NEO Surveyor (Near-Earth Object Surveyor Space Telescope) Planetary Defense Coordination Office Planetary Science Division Science & Research Science Mission Directorate WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) View the full article
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