A spacecraft is about to begin its journey to crash into an asteroid on purpose. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Mission, or DART, will deliberately impact a small asteroid called Dimorphos to deflect its orbit around a bigger object, Didymos. While this system presents no danger to Earth, an asteroid the size of Dimorphos would cause regional devastation if it hit our planet. DART will demonstrate a potential method of protecting Earth from hazards in the future. Nancy Chabot, planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, has the details. She also discusses searching for meteorites in Antarctica and discovering the secrets of planet Mercury.

James Webb Space Telescope Program Director Greg Robinson discusses NASA's largest and most powerful space science telescope ever constructed.

NASA's Marc Rayman discusses the legacy of the Dawn mission to the two most massive bodies in the main asteroid belt.

As NASA prepares to send astronauts to the Moon through the Artemis program, engineers are working on technologies that will give these explorers power – solar power, that is. In space, the harsh radiation and huge temperature changes make for a challenging environment. Lyndsey McMillon-Brown at NASA’s Glenn Research Center leads a study of solar cells made from a material called perovskite. This material has the potential to help power lunar habitats one day. Learn about this innovation and Lyndsey’s journey to NASA.

Our Sun lights up the solar system, but it’s as not calm or predictable as it may seem. Flares and explosions called coronal mass ejections unleash fast-moving particles and radiation that pose dangers to spacecraft and astronauts alike. Yaireska Collado-Vega leads a team at NASA’s Goddard Spacecraft Center that is studying the solar weather environment so that robots and people exploring space can be protected. In this episode of Gravity Assist, she describes the excitement and challenges of understanding space weather, and how she got to be a NASA scientist.

Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment Principal Investigator Mike Hecht discusses the MOXIE technology demonstration that's generating oxygen on the Red Planet.

The planets of our solar system didn’t have such stable orbits a few billion years ago. The giant outer planets moved around chaotically in their orbits, and Uranus and Neptune may have even switched places. To get a more complete understanding of the full history of our solar system, NASA is sending a spacecraft called Lucy to investigate the Trojans, mysterious small objects that share an orbit of the Sun with Jupiter. Principal investigator Hal Levison of the Southwest Research Institute’s branch in Boulder, Colorado, discusses this exciting mission, launching Oct. 16, 2021.

Lucy Deputy Project Systems Engineer Mike Sekerak discusses the first space mission to study Jupiter's Trojan asteroid swarms.

Parker Solar Probe Mission Scientist Adam Szabo discusses NASA's journey to the Sun.

NASA Lessons Learned Program Manager Michael Bell discusses the agency's Lessons Learned Information System.