One year ago, on September 26,
2022, NASA's DART mission navigated
to the small asteroid Dimorphos and deliberately crashed into it.
Dimorphos is a tiny moon orbiting the asteroid Didymos,
which is just a bit larger than Bennu and composed of stony material.
The DART impact shortened Dimorphos’ orbital period by 33 minutes, making it
the first full scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology.
This summer, while the Bennu samples were approaching,
Earth, technicians in Titusville, Florida, were preparing
the psyche spacecraft to visit an asteroid of a different type.
Psyche is named after its massive target 16 psyche,
which is about 400 times larger than Bennu and more than three times as dense.
The psyche spacecraft will visit an asteroid that may consist
of a significant amount of nickel ion metal mixed with rock.
It will remotely study 16 psyche's elemental composition,
topography and gravitational and magnetic fields.
The mission will provide insights into the formation of terrestrial planets
like Earth.
Psyche's Launch window opens on October 5th.
November.
Maybe sweater weather for folks in the Northern hemisphere.
But for the Lucy mission, things will just be heating up.
On November 1st, Lucy will train its cameras on the main belt.
Asteroid Dinkinesh.
It will take pictures while rapidly flying by and test its ability
to track asteroids during high speed encounters.
The Dinkinesh flyby will prepare Lucy for its next encounter
with the main belt asteroid Donald Johanson in 2025.
In 2027, Lucy will begin its long trip through the Jupiter Trojans
to swarms of primitive asteroids trapped in Jupiter's orbit
that are thought to be the fossils of planet formation.
As the weather starts to cool down.
Hold on to your hats.
It's going to be an asteroid autumn to remember.