Intrepid Museum
Virtual Astronomy Live
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission
PAST EVENT
Thursday, Dec 16th, 2021
5:30 PM EST
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is a planetary defense-driven test of technologies for preventing an impact of Earth by a hazardous asteroid. DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space. The mission of DART is designed to evaluate the kinetic impact technique by striking an asteroid with a spacecraft at high relative velocity and observing the resulting change in orbit.
The primary objective is to assess kinetic impact as a method for redirection of any future asteroids found to be on a trajectory to impact Earth. Hear from mission manager, Scott Bellamy as he talks about this launch, (set for November 2021) and gives a behind the scenes look at the mission and what the future holds. Learn more about this event here: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=DART
A 5:00pm pre-show will take place with an interactive talk from an Intrepid Museum Educator.
The event is hosted and co-produced by John “Das” Galloway, founder of the Kerbal Space Academy.
This program is supported through a NASA Cooperative Agreement awarded to the New York Space Grant Consortium.
Participants
Scott Bellamy
NASA Mission Manager
Scott Bellamy is one of the Mission Managers in the Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL. Presently, Scott is responsible for day-to-day oversight of the Europa Clipper flagship mission, which will launch in October 2024 to perform a detailed exploration of Jupiter’s ocean-world moon, Europa. This mission will provide priceless information on the thickness and composition of the ice shell to possibly enable a future mission to land a probe on Europa and search for microbial life.
Prior to that, Scott was simultaneously the Mission Manager for the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to obtain and return the first-ever United States asteroid sample; the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission to conduct a real-life experiment in changing an asteroid’s orbit; the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster–Commercial (NEXT-C) project providing DART’s primary propulsion; and the Near Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) mission to provide the capability for detecting low-observable asteroids.
Scott came to Marshall in 2008 as the Air Force Liaison Office and served in several roles since, including being a member of the very small team that shaped what later became the Space Launch System (SLS). Scott retired from the Air Force with over 25 years of service.
Summer Ash
Moderator
Summer Ash has been both a rocket scientist and an astrophysicist. She is a freelance science writer and communicator whose work has been published in The Atlantic, NBC News, Smithsonian, Now.Space, Scientific American, Slate, and Nautilus.
John “Das”Galloway
Host and Producer
“Das” is a science outreach communicator who specializes in live, interactive video content. He is the creator of the Kerbal Space Academy, where he uses video games as a tool to start science and engineering conversations with viewers of all ages, and VECTORS Virtual Field Trips, which brings real-time interactive video to museums, events, and historical locations. “Das” also serves as a host and producer for NASASpaceflight.com.
Produced by Intrepid Museum in partnership with Kerbal Space Academy and Egress Productions, LLC.