T+0:06:40: Stage 1 Entry Burn Begins A subset of the first stage’s Merlin 1D engines begin an entry burn to slow down for landing. The 43-foot-tall fairing is made of two clamshell-like halves composed of carbon fiber with an aluminum honeycomb core. T+0:03:11: Fairing Jettison The 5.2-meter (17.1-foot) diameter payload fairing jettisons once the Falcon 9 rocket ascends through the dense lower atmosphere. The second stage will perform a “dogleg” maneuver early in its burn to align with the proper track for DART’s launch. T+0:02:44: First Ignition of Second Stage The second stage Merlin-Vacuum engine ignites for a five-and-a-half-minute burn to put the rocket and DART spacecraft into a preliminary parking orbit. T+0:02:36: Stage 1 Separation The Falcon 9’s first stage separates from the second stage moments after MECO. T+0:02:33: MECO The Falcon 9’s nine Merlin 1D engines shut down. T+0:01:12: Max Q The Falcon 9 rocket reaches Max Q, the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure. T+0:01:00: Mach 1 The Falcon 9 rocket reaches Mach 1, the speed of sound, as the nine Merlin 1D engines provide more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust. T-0:00:00: Liftoff After the rocket’s nine Merlin engines pass an automated health check, hold-down clamps will release the Falcon 9 booster for liftoff from the SLC-4E launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The timeline below outlines the launch sequence for the Falcon 9 flight with DART. The trajectory allows SpaceX to position its drone ship for the first stage landing a proper distance away from Isla Guadalupe, a Mexican island west of Baja California. The second stage will perform a “dogleg” steering maneuver, or a left turn, early in its burn to align with the proper track for DART’s launch. It first flew in November 2020 with the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich oceanography satellite, then launched again in May with 60 Starlink internet satellites. The Falcon 9 first stage booster set to launch the DART mission has two previous flights to its credit. The entire mission costs $330 million, according to NASA. Didymos and Dimorphos, the asteroid system targeted by DART, do not pose any near-term threat to our planet.ĭART was developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and funded by NASA. The experiment will demonstrate how a future spacecraft could be launched to nudge an asteroid off of a collision course with Earth. Scientists will use ground-based telescopes to measure how much the kinetic impact from DART changed the orbit of Dimorphos around its larger companion, named Didymos. The target asteroid, named Dimorphos, is about the size of a football stadium. The first-of-its-kind mission will take aim on a binary asteroid next September, guiding itself to strike the smaller of the pair. The payload for the mission is NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, mission. The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket is poised for takeoff from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 10:21:02 p.m. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, heading southeast over the Pacific Ocean with NASA’s DART asteroid deflection experiment.
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