1 00:00:01,001 --> 00:00:08,008 Never in my life would I have thought I would take a couple hundred million dollar spacecraft and crash it into an asteroid. 2 00:00:08,908 --> 00:00:17,183 My name is Michelle Chen and I lead the team that is responsible for the autonomous navigation of DART spacecraft to hit an asteroid. 3 00:00:17,384 --> 00:00:21,221 The DART mission is the first planetary defense test mission. 4 00:00:21,221 --> 00:00:26,526 Our goal is to hit and impact an asteroid to understand and study the momentum transfer 5 00:00:26,526 --> 00:00:32,465 so that we could potentially later down the road if we need to deflect an asteroid on its way to Earth. 6 00:00:32,465 --> 00:00:33,900 I am the SMART Nav lead. 7 00:00:34,200 --> 00:00:38,638 SMART Nav stands for Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real-Time Navigation. 8 00:00:38,638 --> 00:00:41,608 SMART Nav, I always consider it sort of like the brains. 9 00:00:41,708 --> 00:00:44,978 And so, the camera, DRACO, is essentially the eyes. 10 00:00:44,978 --> 00:00:51,051 The algorithm has to identify and hit the target in the field of view of the camera. 11 00:00:51,051 --> 00:00:54,287 We're flying at over six kilometers a second. 12 00:00:54,287 --> 00:00:59,359 It essentially occupies a pixel up until possibly thirty minutes prior to impact. 13 00:00:59,359 --> 00:01:02,028 And then that's where everything gets really exciting 14 00:01:02,095 --> 00:01:05,498 And so you could just imagine if it was a human being joysticking this. 15 00:01:05,598 --> 00:01:08,968 Because we don't know for sure what the asteroids look like, 16 00:01:08,968 --> 00:01:15,408 our simulation gives us the capability to use different asteroid shapes and asteroid objects 17 00:01:15,408 --> 00:01:20,613 to see that our SMART Nav algorithm performs against all these unknowns. 18 00:01:20,613 --> 00:01:23,583 We're super excited and nervous as well. 19 00:01:23,583 --> 00:01:28,988 I love pushing the boundaries and I love the application of math into real-world problems.