Dimorphos will probably only show minor scars after the crash, while DART will be destroyed. As Didymos is a relatively fast spinning asteroid, that means that some material from it could have been shed and coalesced into Dimorphos.Īlthough Didymos was later deemed unthreatening, its close distance to Earth and its binary nature made it a primary candidate for the DART mission. That moon, Dimorphos, was named for a Greek word meaning “of two forms.” (Didymos is Greek for “twin.”)Īccording to NASA, it’s possible that Dimorphos is a fragment of Didymos spun off in a process known as rotational fission. Follow-up observations hinted at a companion, which was confirmed in 2003. They are classified as potentially hazardous asteroids because they will have other close encounters with Earth in the future.ĭidymos was first discovered in 1996 at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. The pair became popular on Earth when they had a close encounter with our planet on May 25, 2021.

The point of the test is to see if intentionally crashing into an asteroid will cause it to shift its orbit. But NASA assures that this mission will pose no threat as the impact is designed to bring Dimorphos’ orbit closer to the larger of the two asteroids, and the impulse of energy is too low to make a significant change to its orbit. This sounds like risky business, messing with a nearby asteroid like that. The craft will smash into the mini-moon at 15,000 mph. NASA will monitor changes in the mini-moon’s orbit from ground stations, which will help determine if the mission was a success since there won’t be much left of DART after. The DART spacecraft will crash into the mini-moon, attempting to off-set its orbit. The Didymos pair are separated by just over a kilometer, with the primary body rotating once every 2.26 hours while the tidally locked moonlet orbits the main body once every 11.9 hours.

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