The Comet Chasers Team is really enjoying working with so many schools, students and others in support of the DART Mission.  We loved being able to showcase the project at the Planetary Defence Conference 2023 at the United Nations in Vienna in April.  We were also excited to see that our schools' data were included in analysis by Tim Lister at LCOGT which was also presented at the conference (see the project credit details here).  


Questions for the DART Mission Team

Our students had many excellent questions about the DART Mission, and beyond.  Thank you to all the DART Mission team who took the time to answer those questions.

Richard Moissl (Head of Planetary Defence at the European Space Agency ) checking out the Comet Chasers observations

Elena Adams (Chief Engineer on the DART Mission) answers some the great questions posed by our schools

Andy Rivkin (Investigation team lead on the DART Mission) said he has loved seeing the observations and animations schools have been making 

Here you can see some of the amazing images that Comet Chasers have made for the DART Mission.  (Other images are also available on the individual schools' observation pages.)  

Scroll through them to see all the schools and individuals involved.

Can you spot the differences between images taken before DART impact on 2022-09-26 and those taken after? 

These will be added to the data set to be analysed for NASA. #WorkingWithNASA #SavingThePlanet

Helping NASA and ESA save the Earth from an asteroid strike!

We are very excited that we are going to be helping the NASA DART Mission, by making observations of asteroid system Didymos and Diamorphos.  We have received a grant from the Royal Astronomical Society to help us develop resources linked to the Mission, and to work with schools, and more generally at outreach events.  If you would like to be part of it then email helen.usher @ open.ac.uk

DART - initial presentation.pptx
DART Flyer.docx.pdf