Houston, We Have a Ride!

NASA chooses SpaceX Falcon 9 for DART liftoff

NASA has selected SpaceX to carry its first planetary defense mission to space, The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). Today, NASA announced that it has awarded a launch service contract to SpaceX in Hawthorne, California specifically to lift DART to Earth orbit where it can continue on it’s mission to hit the Didymos binary system.

DART was originally planned to piggy back off of another mission related to geostationary orbite satellites, however the mission was later upgraded to a dedicated launch. While NASA did not mention whether the DART spacecraft of 500 kg would be flying solo, but they did disclose the $69 million cost of the mission. The $69 million covers the Falcon 9 launch vehicle chosen for the job, and the rest of the mission expenses. The spacecraft is currently scheduled for liftoff from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on its scheduled launch date in June 2021.

DART will be the first mission to demonstrate the effectiveness of using a kinetic impact to deviate an asteroid heading for Earth in a planetary emergency.

This particular mission will have various offices in play during launch and mission operations. While SpaceX will be monitoring the actual launch, NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the service. The actual mission operations upon separation will be handled by the JHU-Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.