Star Talks: Earth strikes back: NASA's first planetary defense experiment

Late 2022, NASA's DART spacecraft deliberately crashed into an asteroid at a speed of more than 13,000 mph. Given this dramatic end, ground based telescopes, including several at Lowell Observatory, will be tasked with witnessing the aftermath. Dr. Moskovitz will discuss background to the DART mission, what was expected to happen, and why smashing into things in outer space can be fun, and the results so far from the mission. Nick Moskovitz is an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He has degrees from the University of California at Santa Barbara (BS Physics) and the University of Hawaii (PhD Astronomy). His research is related to small bodies in the Solar System with active projects involving video observations of meteors, curation of an asteroid database (asteroid.lowell.edu), and observations of near-Earth asteroids. Star Talks are in partnership with