10-26-2023 Howard - Flipbook - Page 60
During that journey, was there still work
to be done?
We were constantly fine-tuning the
thrusters and sensors on DART. And we
kept our fingers crossed. That 7 million mile
distance is so far that you can’t joystick it.
But DART behaved perfectly. It was a regular
spacecraft, made mostly of aluminum. It
wasn’t shaped like a silver bullet or anything,
and there were no explosives on board. It ran
into the asteroid really hard, at 14,000 miles
an hour. It just used its mass to do its stuff.
Was the day of the “big bang” an
emotional one?
At the moment of impact, 7:15 p.m., the
whole mission control room at APL was in
controlled chaos. I’m not a guy to jump up
and down but, watching the collision on
the 72-inch monitor, my eyes were weepy. I
was, like, “Wow, nothing went wrong.” I felt
joy and relief. Then we shook hands with
about 20 VIPs who’d been invited to watch
it [at APL], like Bill Nye, the Science Guy,
[Maryland] Congressman John Sarbanes and
Cal Ripken. Then I went home and popped
Champagne.
Any regrets about losing the spacecraft?
This imagery from
NASA’s Hubble Space
Telescope from Oct.
8, 2022, shows the
debris blasted from the
surface of Dimorphos
after the asteroid was
intentionally impacted
by NASA’s DART
spacecraft on Sept.
26. The shape of that
tail has changed over
time. Scientists are
continuing to study
this material and how it
moves in space, in order
to better understand
the asteroid. IMAGE
BY NASA/ESA/STSCI/
HUBBLE
Someone asked, “Do you feel sad because
the thing you spent five years building just
died?” No. DART did exactly what it was
supposed to do. In the end, it destroyed itself,
but we achieved success. I wasn’t sentimental,
I was grateful.
What’s your next project?
We’re going to Jupiter next year to study
the evolution of volcanoes on Io, one of its
moons. Io is peppered with volcanoes, and we
need to know how they work.
What is left on your wish list?
Backpacking with a goal. I’d like to walk the
Appalachian Trail. But there are a lot of big
rocks out there, so I’m going to have to map
them all.
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