As NASA prepares to usher in a new form of planetary defense, one Johns Hopkins engineer will be eagerly awaiting the big collision that she is helping orchestrate.
Elena Adams, the mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and her team will spend the next two weeks carefully observing Didymos, a double-asteroid system that poses no threat to Earth and yet will be the target of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test—a first-of-its-kind, proof-of-concept mission that will intentionally crash a spacecraft into an asteroid’s moonlet to deflect it away from its course.
“During the day of impact, I’ll be more of a conductor, making sure that all of the orchestra is following the beat and playing their parts,” said Adams, who will discuss the mission...
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