The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART): Planetary Defense Investigations and Requirements

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a kinetic impactor mission, designed to demonstrate that mitigation technique on (65803) Didymos I Dimorphos, the secondary of the (65803) Didymos system. DART has four Level-1 Requirements to meet in order to declare mission success: (1) impacting Dimorphos in September–October 2022, (2) causing at least a 73-second change in its binary orbit period via the impact, (3) measuring the change in binary period to an uncertainty of 7.3 seconds or less, and (4) measuring the momentum transfer efficiency (of the impact and characterizing the resulting effects of the impact. The data necessary to achieve these requirements will be obtained and analyzed by the DART Investigation Team. We discuss the rationales for the data to be gathered, the analyses to be undertaken, and how mission success will be achieved.