arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) near Lompoc, California, in early October<\/a>\u00a0after a cross-country drive. DART team members have since been preparing the spacecraft for flight, testing the spacecraft\u2019s mechanisms and electrical system, wrapping the final parts in multilayer insulation blankets, and practicing the launch sequence from both the launch site and the mission operations center at APL.<\/p>\nDART headed to the SpaceX Payload Processing Facility on VSFB on Oct. 26. Two days later, the team received the green light to fill DART\u2019s fuel tank with roughly 110 pounds (50 kilograms) of hydrazine propellant for spacecraft maneuvers and attitude control. DART also carries about 130 pounds (60 kilograms) of xenon for the NEXT-C ion engine. Engineers loaded the xenon before the spacecraft left APL in early October.<\/p>\n
Starting on Nov. 10, engineers will \u201cmate\u201d the spacecraft to the adapter that stacks on top of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. A day\u00a0before launch, the rocket will roll out of the hangar and onto the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E),\u00a0where it will propel the spacecraft into space and kick\u00a0off DART\u2019s journey to the Didymos system.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m both amazed and grateful that DART has gone from a twinkle in the eye to a spacecraft in final preparation for launch within 11 years,\u201d said Andy Cheng, DART investigation team lead at APL and the one who came up with the idea of DART. \u201cWhat made it possible was a great team that overcame all the challenges of building a spacecraft to do something never done before.\u201d<\/p>\n
DART\u2019s first launch opportunity is scheduled for Nov. 23 at 10:20 p.m. PST. If weather or other issues prevent a launch on the first night, the team will have an additional opportunity to launch the next day. If necessary, subsequent launch attempts can take place through February 2022.<\/p>\n
Johns Hopkins APL has been directed to manage the DART mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency\u2019s Planetary Missions Program Office. The agency provides support for the mission from several centers, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Johnson Space Center in Houston, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The launch is managed by NASA\u2019s Launch Services Program, based at the agency\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team members of NASA\u2019s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) have filled the spacecraft with fuel, have performed many of the final tests, and are running rehearsals as they approach DART\u2019s scheduled launch on Nov. 23. DART will be the world\u2019s first planetary defense test mission, heading for the small moonlet asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","transcript_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"category-space"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/dart-image_1-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/dart-image_2.jpg\")
<\/a>