THE SPACECRAFT: NASA'S DART MISSION Mug

“Celebrate humankind's first ever test of planetary defense, NASA'S DART Mission spacecraft-asteroid collision, with this fun graphic designed and illustrated by artist Elizabeth Meggs. DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test. On September 26, 2022, at 23:14 UTC, NASA successfully proved kinetic impact could deflect an asteroid off its course when they crashed the DART spacecraft, traveling 3.8 miles per second (approximately 14,000 miles per hour), and 6.8 million miles from Earth, into the asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger asteroid names Didymos. The mission was wildly successful, shortening Dimorphos' orbit by 32 minutes, which far exceeded the goal of 73 seconds. The spacecraft's camera system, DRACO (Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation) captured historically significant first-of-their-kind photographs of the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos and the spacecraft's final view in the seconds before impact. Meggs was selected by NASA to be one of 20 American observers of the DART Mission's final impact, viewed on site at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Her DART Mission-inspired graphics and new NASA logo design are intended to raise awareness and funds to support girls and women in STEAM fields (science, technology, engineering, art, and math), specifically via the charity Girls Who Code. This is an international nonprofit organization that teaches girls and women how to code using programming languages, preparing them for STEAM fields. (ALL IMAGES, DESIGNS, AND TEXT COPYRIGHT © ELIZABETH MEGGS)”