Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos binary system. Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
DART will be the first Launch Services Program (LSP) mission to fly on a previously flown Falcon 9 booster
DART will be the first interplanetary mission flown on a Falcon 9
LSP contracted with SpaceX for the DART launch in 2019 through the NASA Launch Services II Contract
This is the 97th LSP Launch (since 1998), the 40th LSP launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB), the fourth LSP SpaceX launch, and the third LSP SpaceX launch from VSFB
This is LSP’s fifth launch since the start of the COVID-10 pandemic, and third from VSFB
