Deflecting a large, irregular, rotating mass in deep space is a pretty different mission from launching a missile at LEO targets or launching an explosive vehicle from a satellite currently in orbit. The people I know that worked DART are now working other civil space missions like Dragonfly, the mission to Titan.
I guess they both involve orbital dynamics to calculate the rendezvous, but they’re very different orbital regimes.
Anyway, I disagree that it was military adjacent or more appropriate to be done via military funding. It doesn’t have direct military application in the near future. Even proposals I’ve seen for stuff like GPS on the moon is being funded on the civilian side.
Deflecting a large, irregular, rotating mass in deep space is a pretty different mission from launching a missile at LEO targets or launching an explosive vehicle from a satellite currently in orbit. The people I know that worked DART are now working other civil space missions like Dragonfly, the mission to Titan.
I guess they both involve orbital dynamics to calculate the rendezvous, but they’re very different orbital regimes.
Anyway, I disagree that it was military adjacent or more appropriate to be done via military funding. It doesn’t have direct military application in the near future. Even proposals I’ve seen for stuff like GPS on the moon is being funded on the civilian side.