NASA Unveils Official Name Of Planetary Defense Mission’s Target Asteroid

NASA has unveiled the name of the asteroid that will be the focus of its upcoming planetary defense mission. The asteroid’s name was selected in preparation for a potentially Earth-saving mission.

In 2003, astronomers came across an asteroid with an orbiting moon of its own. Due to its nature, the binary system was named as Didymos, which is Greek for twin. Didymos became the name of the main asteroid in the system, while its orbiting moon became unofficially known as Didymos B.

Didymos is a near-Earth asteroid system, which means it occasionally flies close to Earth as it travels around the Sun. Due to this, it was selected as the target of a new mission organized by NASA.

Dubbed as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the objective of the mission is to deflect an approaching asteroid by hitting it with a spacecraft. Through the mission, NASA plans to study the possibility of saving Earth from an impact event caused by an approaching asteroid.

NASA selected Didymos B as the main target of the mission, which is scheduled to launch sometime in 2022. In preparation for the mission, the space rock was given an official name, which is Dimorphos.

“Upon discovery, asteroids get a temporary name until we know their orbits well enough to know they won't be lost,” Andy Rivkin, a research astronomer working with the DART mission, said in a statement. “Once the Didymos system was identified as the ideal target for the DART mission, we needed to formally distinguish between the main body and the satellite.”

Although choosing a name sounds like a simple task, it actually took an international collaboration to formulate Dimorphos’ official designation.

The name of Didymos, the main asteroid, was given after astronomers from different observatories around the world were able to confirm its trajectory. Then, after it was decided that its moon will be the target of the DART mission, the project’s heads worked with other astronomers to come up with an official name for Didymos B.

Eventually, the name Dimorphos was suggested by planetary scientist Kleomenis Tsiganis, who is also a member of the DART team.

“Dimorphos, which means ‘two forms,’ reflects the status of this object as the first celestial body to have the ‘form’ of its orbit significantly changed by humanity - in this case, by the DART impact,” he explained.