Sep 222022
On the 26th of September NASA’s DART mission will intentionally crash a spacecraft into a moon of the asteroid (65803) Didymos. This will be the first test of a kinetic impactor to see if energy can be used to change the orbit of an asteroid. The moon’s name is Dimorphos and it orbits its parent asteroid in 11.9 hours. If successful, the impact is expected to reduce the orbital period to 11.8 hours. This will make the moon orbit slightly closer to Didymos. The ability to add or subtract energy from a potentially hazardous asteroid or comet may be critical at some future date.
This clip is ten 300 second images. The moon Dimorphos is too small for me to see.