NASA's DART spacecraft snaps Jupiter & its Moon before crashing into asteroid on Sept 27

NASA’s DART spacecraft is less than a week away when it deliberately crashes into an asteroid to test a planetary defense technology. Short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, DART is slated to crash into Dimorphos, a space rock orbiting a bigger asteroid Didymos at 4:44 am IST on September 27 to test if the impact would change its orbital path. Dimorphos measures 160 metres in diameter whereas Didymos is 780 metres across. 

While on its way to Didymos, the spacecraft has captured an image of Jupiter and four Moons orbiting the gas giant. According to NASA, DART pointed its Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) toward Jupiter to test the Smart NAV system. As the name suggests, this system is for navigation that would help the spacecraft autonomously head toward its target. 

As for the image, it was taken when the spacecraft was roughly 26 million km from Earth and approximately 700 million km from Jupiter. Along with the gas giant, the picture features Ganymede, Jupiter, Europa, Io, and Callisto from left to right. 

DARCO, on the other hand, is the only instrument on DART which will capture images of the binary asteroid system before it gets destroyed in the crash. Jupiter was used by the mission teams to test the NAV system as the planet offered similar conditions that the spacecraft would encounter near Didymos. DART’s camera targeted Jupiter’s moon Europa as it emerged from behind Jupiter, similar to how Dimorphos will visually separate from the larger asteroid Didymos in the hours leading up to impact.

(DART's mission profile; Image; NASA)

"Every time we do one of these tests, we tweak the displays, make them a little bit better and a little bit more responsive to what we will actually be looking for during the real terminal event", Peter Ericksen SMART Nav software engineer at NASA's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) said in a statement. 

The tests were conducted to give the SMART Nav team the chance to assess how well the navigation system performs in flight. On September 26, the teams will conduct a final maneuver to confirm the position of the target Dimorphos within 2 kilometers following which DART will head toward its target autonomously. Tap here to know what happens after the impact.