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NASA DART Challenge


St4rdust

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Did you know that NASA has a planetary defense program that protects the Earth?


There are over 26,000 known near-Earth objects (NEOs) according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies. NEOs are basically asteroids or comets whose orbit brings them within a zone approximately 195 million kilometers (121 million miles) from the Sun, thus being able to pass within about 50 million km (30 million miles) of Earth’s orbit. Although the vast majority of NEOs aren’t big enough to pose any serious threat, those that are larger than around 30 to 50 meters in size, however, could cause widespread damage around their areas of impact. But NEOs that are greater than 140 meters in size and whose orbit brings them within 7.5 million km (4.7 million miles) of Earth’s orbit are the real concern. These are known as potentially hazardous objects (PHOs) and as of June 2021, 2,185 of them have been identified… as if we didn’t have enough things to worry about in life, right? Luckily, NASA has been studying several methods to deflect objects on a course to impact EARTH. One of the most promising is using a kinetic impactor, which currently is the simplest and most technologically mature method available to protect us against PHOs. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be the first ever space mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection by kinetic impactor on a binary asteroid target: the smaller asteroid of Didymos, called Didymos B. NASA’s goal is to send the car-sized DART spacecraft slamming into Didymos B at 25,000 km/h (16,000 mph) to determine by how much the impact can shift the orbit of Didymos B around Didymos A.


The KSC, of course, was not going to be left out in attempting such a feat, besides crashing spacecrafts into celestial objects is what Kerbals do best, so we have a new exciting challenge for you, kerbonauts!


For this challenge we're collaborating with NASA and @Galileo—creator of great ad-on such as Galieo’s Planet Pack and JNSQ—with a team of experienced KSP modders to bring you the possibility to recreate the DART mission in the KSP universe. But how, you ask? Well, Galileo and his team created an easy-to-use standalone mod that places an analogue of the Didymos binary system between the orbits of Duna and Kerbin. Moreover, these objects are of similar size to the real counterparts and the Didymos B’s orbit is alterable, so the one thing left to do is to do some scientific crashing!

To successfully complete this challenge, you’ll need to:

Download and install the Didymos mod, which can be found here: 

 

Build an uncrewed ion propulsion spacecraft with deployable solar panels that looks as closely as possible to NASA’s DART spacecraft

Launch it aboard a Falcon 9-like rocket.

Intercept the binary near-Kerbin asteroid.

Crash onto Didymos’ secondary object and alter its orbital period.

Post a video or screenshots in this thread showcasing your successful mission. (Videos should be under 15 minutes in length.)

Additional points if you safely land the Falcon9-like rocket on Kerbin.
Besides the Didymos mod, only purely aesthetic mods are allowed.

Looking for inspiration? Check out APL’s mission trailer:

 

 

 

You have until November 19th to complete the challenge. NASA will be reviewing submissions and liking their favorites, so don’t miss out! 
 

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Guest The Doodling Astronaut

How to download the mod (PC and have steam):

Go to each folder which should be in this order

This PC ->  Program Files (x86) -> Steam ->  Steamapps -> common -> KerbalSpaceProgram -> Gamedata

Download the zip folder in Gamedata, and extract the mod folder into Gamedata, you don't need the zip folder afterwords

Hopefully this helps some first-time mod downloaders

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Guest The Doodling Astronaut
4 minutes ago, Souptime said:

Finished editing, custom music time!

Wow someone got done fast like a DART :D

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Guest The Doodling Astronaut

Was going too slow for this attempt. But was it a HIT or a MISS???

 

 

This is not my final submission btw, just thought this would be fun to do

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It is done, the Vélos mission and my 1000th post!

 

1K post art too:

4KlTuGG.png

Music I made in order: 

 

0:00-1:57 "Skydance" 1:57-4:00 "Sugarplums" 4:00-5:40 "Night run" 5:40-7:31 "Disco Dancin!"

P.S. the first 2 songs don't fade out at the end, not sure why. but it's too late to fix so oh well

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9 minutes ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

Was going too slow for this attempt. But was it a HIT or a MISS???

 

 

This is not my final submission btw, just thought this would be fun to do

That was a miss but darn if it wasn't super duper close.

As soon as the asteroid loads it drifts very very slightly due to computer floating point math eccentricities, hence the dialog popping up anytime you are in the neighborhood.

Edited by R-T-B
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Guest The Doodling Astronaut
1 minute ago, R-T-B said:

That was a miss but darn if it wasn't super duper close.

It was going too slow. Was planning 8000 m/s. But I have adjusted, problem is that I went for aesthetics so I have no connection which makes preforming a maneuver amazing nor do I have great battery or solar.

So the next attempt tomorrow, will be spacing out burns like I did for Eeloo one time with a dawn engine.

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13 minutes ago, Souptime said:

It is done, the Vélos mission and my 1000th post!

 

1K post art too:

4KlTuGG.png

Music I made in order: 

 

0:00-1:57 "Skydance" 1:57-4:00 "Sugarplums" 4:00-5:40 "Night run" 5:40-7:31 "Disco Dancin!"

P.S. the first 2 songs don't fade out at the end, not sure why. but it's too late to fix so oh well

Nice bullseye...  I confess I skipped to the very end at first expecting impact and got slightly confused.  Dead on hit though!

4 minutes ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

It was going too slow. Was planning 8000 m/s. But I have adjusted, problem is that I went for aesthetics so I have no connection which makes preforming a maneuver amazing nor do I have great battery or solar.

So the next attempt tomorrow, will be spacing out burns like I did for Eeloo one time with a dawn engine.

If I were to attempt this (may very well later), my approach would probably be an excessive amount of dawn engines, solar panels, and a grabber unit... lol.

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Guest The Doodling Astronaut
5 hours ago, Kerbal Productions said:

I hope I'll be successful on this mission... I'm intimidated w/ the submissions ngl...

Don’t be, it’s not as hard as it looks. Well, unless you want to ram it at 7100 m/s (then good luck cuz the burns take forever)

AKA u got this (ur asteroid day submission says it all u got talent)

Edited by The Doodling Astronaut
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