DART’s launch, intercept geometry, and precision hit

12:38In the same analogy of the car accident like before, imagine you're in a James Bond movie and James Bond is in a car in the left lane and the love interest in that movie is handcuffed to the steering wheel in a car in a right lane and they're both going 90 m hour down a road and the the right car is about to hit something. He's like, "Well, let me just bump it >> out of the way cuz that'll change how it's driving out of the way of about to hit this brick wall that's in front of us." Just as like a grounded analogy. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is this one of the dream fantasies of yours? Yeah, he had a lot of he had a lot of detail in that one, guys. Um, yeah, but exactly right. We want to just nudge it, get it out of the way. Okay. In 2022,

13:20that was the Dart mission. >> It was the first intentional deflection. It was actually launched out of Vandenberg in 2013, which is right down the street of Southern California. >> Um, it went with the Earth to meet up with this double asteroid system. So this double asteroid system which is Ditimus and um Dorphis. So we can look at an animation of their orbits, right? The green is the double asteroid system. Yes. The teal is Earth. >> Yes. >> And the pink is what we're seeing >> of the our like what what you call it? >> The the dark mission. The dark mission. Right. Okay. Sorry. So let me just recap. The blue is Earth.

14:00>> Yes. The dart mission comes out in pink from Earth. It's following Earth. As you can see, it's just leading it a little bit. >> Yes. >> And the green double asteroid system that we're trying to hit is going to come meet up with us. >> The double asteroid system is actually a near-ear orbit. And there you go. >> Yep. >> That's when the impact happens. You can tell that the impact is happening pretty close to Earth because both are moving together. And then the impact happens here. But Earth is pretty close. That is by design because what we want to do is we want to have all of the observatories on Earth >> looking at this thing to get as much data as possible. The the impact was like 6 million miles >> which >> in the grand scheme of things is not is not that far away.

14:41>> I want to just pull this back up really quick this animation. Um because I think what's so interesting is when you look at where it launches from. Yeah. The launch of Dart happened on the opposite side like it first left Earth right on the opposite side of the sun from where uh the the asteroid was coming in and it did almost a 3/4 orbit. >> Yeah. >> Prior to contact. And I just want to the the the the distance. Look, if I'm trying to throw a paper ball, a a paper towel ball into the trash can from my desk, >> I'm maybe going to hit it six times out of 10.

15:21>> We're trying to send this thing in an orbit >> around the sun. >> Around the sun, >> with the Earth with the Earth, millions of miles >> um and it made direct contact. I just want to really emphasize the level of precision that is required >> to because that's not the point of this this story per se. It's the second piece, >> but that initial part in and of itself is an exceptional piece of just both the engineering, the math, and the operational planning to execute on. >> Yeah. I mean, NASA's just incredible at doing this kind of stuff. Um, and you, as you mentioned, right, like the thing gets released, it makes almost full circle. So, it's almost like if it got

16:01if it got launched in I I wish I knew the exact date that it got launched, right? But if it got launched somewhere, it's going to almost do a full year. >> Yes. >> Around, right before actually getting there. Pretty incredible. Um, so that's