Assistant professor in aerospace engineering plays role in Double Asteroid Redirection Test

Masatoshi Hirabayashi, an assistant professor in aerospace engineering and part of a NASA-supported scientific team led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, or APL, co-authored three papers detailing results of the first Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART. The spacecraft, launched from California in the fall of 2021, collided with Dimorphos, moon of Didymos, on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2022, and scientists spent the past five months analyzing its impact.

“I am very excited to see new publications from the mission, one of which shows a change in orbital condition before and after the impact by 33 minutes,” said Hirabayashi, who stressed that the Didymos system poses no threat to earth. “This is a thrilling and important result because DART’s impact was originally expected to have a smaller change. It is very promising that kinetic deflection capability can be very efficient in terms of planetary defense.”

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