Behind the Spacecraft: Elena Adams

Before NASA’s #DARTmission slams into an asteroid — in the name of science — it has to be designed, built, launched, and flown. Johns Hopkins APL systems engineer Elena Adams has made sure that the mission will hit the mark. Stay tuned for launch and impact: www.nasa.gov/DART

The DART mission is a test of a technique that could be used to mitigate the threat of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth should one be discovered in the future. DART’s target is not a threat to Earth. While no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, only about 40 percent of those asteroids have been found as of October 2021