On April 11, NASA announced that it had awarded a contract to SpaceX for the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission to change the orbit of asteroids, which will be carried out using a heavy-duty Falcon 9 rocket in June 2021 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The contract amount for SpaceX will be $69 million. The price includes launch and all related services.
DART is a project developed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory as part of NASA's Planetary Defense Program. In the experimental mission, the spacecraft will use an electric rocket engine to fly to the Didymos asteroid. DART will then collide with Didymos's small moon, Didymoon, at a speed of about six kilometers per second.
Astronomers plan to study the change in the small moon's orbit as a result of the impact. This will help scientists evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, proposed as one of the ways to deflect asteroids that threaten the Earth.
“SpaceX is proud to continue our successful collaboration with NASA on this important interplanetary mission,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a company statement. “This contract underscores NASA's confidence in Falcon 9's ability to perform mission-critical science missions while offering the best launch cost in the industry.”
Source: 3dnews.ru