DART misses target
Apr 18, 2005 13: 36 EST
According to NASA, the Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) spacecraft that was successfully launched Friday, April 15 at 10:25 a.m. PDT from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., experienced an on orbit anomaly late Friday. In other words, DART didn’t hit the bull’s eye.
Everything was looking good
The rendezvous and acquisition of the target went fine for DART. And the approach was going smoothly, too. There were only 300 feet to go. That’s when DART aborted the proximity operations, placed itself in the retirement phase, and ended the mission. So much for the $110 million Autonomous Rendezvous test.
Losing fuel
It seems that DART was losing fuel too quickly, which is puzzling since it was launched with more than enough fuel to complete the mission. NASA is putting together a committee to determine what went wrong with DART.
The DART spacecraft was a flight experiment attempting to establish autonomous rendezvous capabilities for the U.S. space program. While previous rendezvous and docking efforts have been piloted by astronauts, the DART spacecraft completed the rendezvous and acquisition with no human intervention, relying on a variety of sensors and analyses to complete these functions.
Image of DART patch courtesy of NASA.
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