In late 2024 or early 2025, the agency’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer—or NEOWISE—is expected to come home in pieces following the conclusion of its second mission later this month. The spacecraft, which spent more than a decade collecting data on objects whizzing past the Earth and exploring ways to defend the planet and its satellites from falling rocks and ice, is now at the mercy of the sun. Soon, it will become unusable.

However, NASA has a replacement lined up: the Near Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor), set for a 2027 launch. The infrared space telescope is the first to be designed specifically for hunting large numbers of NEOs in and around Earth orbit. It has a baseline development cost of $1.2 billion to which NASA committed in 2022.

“NEOWISE has become key in helping us develop and operate NASA’s next-generation infrared space telescope,” said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator of NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor at the University of California at Los Angeles. “It is a precursor mission. NEO Surveyor will seek out the most difficult-to-find asteroids and comets that could cause significant damage to Earth if we don’t find them first.”

On the Hunt

Built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. and borne out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NEOWISE has actually contributed to two separate missions in its 14 years of operation.

Originally known simply as WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), the telescope launched in December 2009 and now orbits the Earth 15 times each day. It was placed in hibernation in 2011 after two years spent discovering and studying galaxies, comets, asteroids, white dwarf stars, and faint objects undetectable to ground-based telescopes.

WISE mapped the entire visible sky using infrared wavelengths—twice—to visualize the clouds of gas and dust orbiting around stars, and its findings are still being analyzed. It also identified tens of millions of supermassive black holes feasting on stars, hiding in plain sight.

After being reactivated in 2013, the spacecraft, now bearing the name NEOWISE, embarked on its second mission, which NASA says has become a key piece of its current planetary defense strategy.

In 2005, Congress directed the space agency to identify and describe at least 9 in 10 of the large space objects that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit. The objective is to seek out hazards and steer them clear of the planet and its growing commercial spaceflight industry.

From near-Earth orbit, NEOWISE so far has taken 1.45 million infrared measurements of 44,000 objects in the solar system. Of those, 3,000 are near-Earth objects (NEOs), including 215 newly discovered NEOs. One of these, named Comet NEOWISE in the spacecraft’s honor, could be seen lighting up the night sky during summer 2020.

“The spacecraft has surpassed all expectations and provided vast amounts of data that the science community will use for decades to come,” said Joseph Hunt, NEOWISE project manager at NASA JPL. “Scientists and engineers who worked on WISE and through NEOWISE also have built a knowledge base that will help inform future infrared survey missions.”

However, because it lacks a propulsion system to keep itself in orbit, the spacecraft has gradually descended toward Earth since launching.

Compounding that is the solar maximum: a period of increased solar activity that occurs every 11 years and appears to be on the horizon, so to speak. Solar flares and other activity are expected to cause atmospheric drag on satellites, which could cause NEOWISE to come tumbling back to Earth as soon as this year.

“The mission has planned for this day a long time,” said Joseph Masiero, deputy principal investigator for the program. “After several years of calm, the sun is waking back up. We are at the mercy of solar activity, and with no means to keep us in orbit, NEOWISE is now slowly spiraling back to Earth.”

As NASA announced in December, the mission will officially come to an end on July 31 when the telescope ceases surveying. The space agency will then place it in hibernation for the final time in August.

Introducing NEO Surveyor

However, NEOWISE’s legacy is expected to live on through NEO Surveyor.

Unlike its predecessor, which found new life under a revised mission profile, NEO Surveyor is being purpose-built to hunt large numbers of asteroids, comets, and other NEOs. Construction of the new design began in December 2022 following a successful technical review, and NASA aims to have it ready in time for a 2027 launch.

Orbiting between the Earth and sun, NEO Surveyor’s mission will be to search for the darkest, least reflective NEOs using its infrared sensors. It will focus mainly on large objects in the neighborhood of Earth’s orbit, which are thought to pose the greatest threat to life should they make impact on the planet or spacecraft. It will also uncover “Earth trojans”—asteroids already in orbit that are often hidden by the sun’s glare.

The program will not eliminate or deflect NEOs, but, as NASA puts it, the agency can only protect Earth and its satellites from hazards if it can identify them first.

“Ground-based telescopes remain essential for us to continually watch the skies, but a space-based infrared observatory is the ultimate high ground that will enable NASA’s planetary defense strategy,” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office in Washington, D.C.

After launch, NEO Surveyor will use its infrared instruments to complete a five-year baseline survey. Its goal is to find at least two-thirds of the NEOs larger than 460 feet across and describe their composition, shape, orbital behavior, and rotation. The observations are intended to be accurate enough that NASA could easily rediscover each object.

Planetary defense is the program’s highest goal. But NEO Surveyor will further help NASA scientists understand how comets and asteroids form and evolve, also an objective of the space agency’s concurrent Psyche asteroid mission.

Like this story? We think you’ll also like the Future of FLYING newsletter sent every Thursday afternoon. Sign up now.

The post NASA’s Asteroid, Comet Hunting Telescope Set to Retire at End of Month appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The 10:19 a.m. EDT launch was the first NASA mission aboard the Falcon Heavy but the fourth launch for side boosters, both of which previously supported the USSF-44, USSF-67, and Hughes Jupiter 3 missions, according to SpaceX.

• READ MORE: NASA: ISS Spacewalk Postponed After Leak Discovery

The spacecraft will now travel six years and ~2.2 billion miles to the asteroid Psyche, currently orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter https://t.co/29bfT6fod2

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 13, 2023

The space agency’s mission is to study the estimated 173-mile-wide asteroid composed of more metal than rock or ice. But the minivan-sized spacecraft powered by solar-electric propulsion won’t reach its target anytime soon.

• READ MORE: SpaceX Starship Is ‘Ready to Launch’ Again—Or Is It?

“Asteroid Psyche’s gravity will capture the spacecraft in late July 2029, and Psyche will begin its prime mission in August,” NASA said. “It will spend about two years orbiting the asteroid to take pictures, map the surface, and collect data to determine Psyche’s composition.”

The mineral composition of Psyche could offer clues about how Earth’s core, as well as the cores of other terrestrial planets, came to be, according to NASA.

• READ MORE: SpaceX Launches Falcon Heavy for First Time in Three Years

The post SpaceX Launches NASA’s Psyche Bound for Asteroid Mission appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

This game of galactic chicken made global headlines and wrote yet another page in NASA’s ongoing galactic narrative, which includes more suspense than an Agatha Christie thriller. Best of all, it was vividly captured via an onboard camera offering an up-close and personal view of the asteroid right before impact. 

IMPACT SUCCESS! Watch from #DARTMIssion’s DRACO Camera, as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully collides with asteroid Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium and poses no threat to Earth. pic.twitter.com/7bXipPkjWD

— NASA (@NASA) September 26, 2022

NASA’s Oscar-Winning Performance

Several Hollywood blockbusters have dramatized what it would be like to send a crew into space to fight off impending planetary destruction via a giant, threatening asteroid. NASA’s “production” was akin to a reality show without the theatrics. In this case, there were three main characters: an asteroid named Didymos, its moonlet called Dimorphos, and a refrigerator-sized spacecraft officially called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

Meaning “twin” in Greek, Didymos was discovered more than two decades ago and has been under NASA’s watchful eye for just that long. It measures roughly 2,560 feet across, orbited by the much smaller Dimorphos, which is a mere 525 feet in diameter. NASA’s mission focused on this little sibling with a name meaning “two forms.” The two were chosen because they don’t pose any threat to Earth. 

Unlike the Hollywood movies, which culminate in explosive endings and shattered asteroids, NASA’s plan to intentionally impact this kind of celestial body is part of the space agency’s overall planetary defense strategy to guard against asteroids, comets, and any other space intruders that may enter into Earth’s “neighborhood.” NASA classifies this as anything within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit. 

When Push Comes to Shove

This isn’t the first time NASA has embarked on a one-way space journey. While most of the others have focused on long-distance space exploration, this voyage was about testing ways of preventing an asteroid from threatening Earth with galactic doom. Rather than exploding it, the DART mission centered on redirecting the moonlet with a gentle “nudge” at 13,421 mph. In scientific lexicon, this deflection technique is known as a kinetic impact.

To make this happen, NASA engineers had to perform some serious long-distance flight planning that began with a launch 10 months ago, a flight of about 7 million miles, and then orchestrating the spacecraft’s impact to within 55 feet of the asteroid’s center. Think of it as dead reckoning on steroids. That E6B doesn’t seem so intimidating anymore, does it? 

Was It a Smashing Success?

Was the high-speed impact from the 1,260-pound DART spacecraft with the estimated 11-billion-pound, 520-foot-long Dimorphos enough to change the asteroid’s trajectory? That is what mission control specialists will assess during the post-impact phase of NASA’s mission. To determine the effectiveness of the impact, the agency has gathered imagery and telemetry from various sources located in space and here on Earth. 

Astronomers will use ground-based telescopes to observe the asteroid system and see how much Dimorphos’ orbit has changed. Space-based telescopes such as the Hubble, Webb, and NASA’s Lucy mission also observed the event and are vital resources to determine (pardon the pun) the “impact” of DART’s collision. 

More than a week before its timely demise, DART launched a shoebox-size companion called LICIACube or Light Italian CubeSat for Imagining of Asteroids to photograph the mission.

NASA won’t know for weeks (and from a quantitative perspective possibly two months), if this was as successful as they had hoped. Dimorphos completes an orbit around Didymos in 11 hours and 55 minutes. NASA predicts DART’s nudge was enough to shift its orbit around Didymos to change both of their trajectories. The agency expects the collision to shorten its orbit by 10 minutes. 

This may not seem like a big number, but a mere 1 percent change in an asteroid’s trajectory could be enough to keep it away from Earth. Dimorphos and Didymos don’t pose any threat to our fragile planet. However, just like any good pilot knows, the key to good flight planning is assessing for contingencies. 

The post NASA Plays Chicken With an Asteroid and Celebrates a ‘Smashing’ Success appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

1. The Plan

While it may seem like an absurd idea, NASA is planning to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid as it passes Earth. The DART spacecraft itself is 100 times smaller than its intended target, but will make its impact at approximately 6.6 km/s, or nearly 15,000 mph. 

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) estimates that the impact will change the trajectory of the asteroid by less than one percent—which is just enough to make a substantial change later in its course. Shortly before the payload, DRACO, makes impact, it will release a smaller CubeSat, the LICIACube, that will record images of DRACO’s approach and ultimate demise.

The entire trip will last about 10 months for the DART mission, giving NASA ample opportunity to test out some new technologies.

2. What DART Stands For

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART for short, is NASA’s mission led by the APL. The “double” refers to the type of asteroid DRACO will be crashing into. The asteroid, dubbed “Dimorphos” orbited by a slightly smaller asteroid, “Didymos.”

The two make up what’s known as a double asteroid system. Didymos, the larger of the two, is nearly half a mile in diameter. Its smaller, asteroid moonlet, Dimorphos, has a diameter of only 160 meters. NASA is targeting the latter head-on, therefore changing its orbit around Didymos and slightly changing the binary asteroid system’s trajectory.

3. New Technology Will Be Used

The DART spacecraft is technically the second of its kind, following the 2005 Deep Impact mission, where NASA successfully landed an impactor spacecraft on a passing comet. However, DART will be the first to intentionally collide with an asteroid to change its course.

This mission will also be the debut of the Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART) system. This will work as part of the guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) system to distinguish between the two asteroids and maneuver toward Dimorphos. The system will activate approximately one hour before impact.

According to APL, the DART team is “leveraging decades of missile guidance algorithms developed at APL.”

The DART mission serves as an opportunity to test its new ion propulsion system, NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster-Commercial (NEXT-C). The propulsion system is electric, powered by solar energy, and uses a gridded ion engine to produce thrust with a xenon propellant.

Much like the International Space Station, DART will be using a Roll-Out Solar Array (ROSA) to power its systems. Each wing, extending 8.6 meters in length, will partially house a “transformational solar array” that includes reflective concentrators that produce three times more power than current standards.

4. How This Can Protect Earth from Interplanetary Harm

Like something out of a sci-fi movie, NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) in 2016. 

Since there aren’t any aliens nearby to worry about, the PDCO focuses on the early detection of potentially hazardous objects (PHOs), things that could pose a threat if they come too close to our planet. The PDCO takes the lead with the U.S. government when it comes to an actual impact threat.

DART will serve as the PDCO’s first mission and is only one part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy. DART falls within the mitigation portion of the strategy, alongside certain FEMA exercises.

5. How The Launch Will Work

As part of ongoing collaboration between NASA and SpaceX, the DART spacecraft will be taking off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The launch window opens on Wednesday, November 24, at 1:12 a.m. EST.

While the spacecraft may be leaving Earth this week, it will take almost a year for DART to reach its destination. According to APL, DART is estimated to collide with Dimorphos between September 26 and October 1 of next year.

Coverage of the launch will begin on Wednesday at 12:30 a.m. on NASA’s website.

The post 5 Things to Know About This Week’s Asteroid Mission appeared first on FLYING Magazine.