NASA's (https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/929/nasas-first-planetary-defense-technology-demonstration-to-collide-with-asteroid-in-2022/) DART is a planetary defense mission which aims to prevent or deflect asteroid impacts. It involves a spacecraft crashing into an asteroid to deflect or redirect the trajectory of the
moonlet in a binary asteroid system called Didymos.
Its website reads: "The collision will change the speed of the
moonlet in its orbit around the main body by a fraction of 1%, enough to be measured using telescopes on Earth."
"The DART spacecraft will achieve the kinetic impact by deliberately crashing itself into the
moonlet at a speed of approximately 6km/s, with the aid of an onboard camera and sophisticated autonomous navigation software," the website reads.
Most likely each of these
moonlet "families" represents fragments of larger precursors that were shattered by collisions early in Jupiter's history.
AIDA's target is the near-Earth asteroid Didymos, approximately 800 metres across, and a secondary body or '
moonlet, whose 150-metre size is more typical of the size of asteroids that could pose a more common hazard to Earth.
When an object from space crashed into Earth, debris from the collision formed a disk around our planet; over time, that disk condensed into a "
moonlet".
They found the pattern in Uranus' rings was similar to moon-related structures in Saturn's rings called
moonlet wakes.
A "propeller," is a clumping of ring particles in front of and behind a tiny
moonlet located between the two "blades," according to the Cassini scientists.
And perhaps the pantheistic celebration in Rising Sun has been evident from the early writing: Elizabeth's awe at the winter scene out her window, young Mahony's flicker of joy in his father's field, the pornographer's delight in the
moonlet grass with Nurse Brady, and Michael Moran's ability to finally see the beauty of his meadow that has always been around him.
Such a
moonlet would violate one of the most fundamental laws of physics, to wit: What goes up must come down.
The following year it will try to hit a 540ft
moonlet travelling at 13,500mph.
Its small satellite or
moonlet is about 150 meters in diameter in an orbit 1.1 km from Didymos.