Recreating DART

[MAFman]

I'm actually working on recreating the DART mission myself, but instead of just hitting the asteroid I'm planning to dock with it and push it into a highly elliptical Kerbin orbit for study.

[EveMaster]

That's a nice idea for a challenge!
You can install the Didymos mod from this challenge for the real Didymos system in KSP: 

I played with this mod and managed to knock Dimorphos out of Didymos orbit with the impact of a stage containing multiple Mammoth Nerv engines. For maximum impact velocity, I planned the impact from retrograde Kerbol orbit with an apoapsis beyond Jool.

If I remember correctly, Didimorphos (the smaller body of the Didimos system) is an order of magnitude larger than the largest stock comet in KSP. So it should be possible to get it captured in Kerbin Orbit, but it really is a big challenge.

Edit:

Numbers of Didimorphos in the KSP mod:

• Mass of Didimorphos: 4 million tons (50% minable asteroid ore)
• Orbital velocity of Didimorphos around Didymos: 0.2 m/s

Numbers of my Didimorphos impact mission:

• Mass of impactor: 552 tons (stage with 19 Nerv engines)
• Impact velocity relative to Didimos: 23.7 km/s
• Escape velocity after impact: 0.6 m/s

Such a high impact velocity is at the edge what KSP is able to simulate, because of the large distance traveled in a single simulation step.  When I repeated the impact, some times it did not dectect the collision or Didimorphos was completely destroyed on impact.

Docking and asteroid mining for fuel surely is better than an impactor for getting Didimorphos captured in Kerbin orbit.

Edited September 27, 2022 by EveMaster