Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Team - 2024 Michael Collins Trophy Winner

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission Team was awarded the 2024 Michael Collins Trophy for Current Achievement.
In 2022, NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission successfully demonstrated asteroid deflection using a kinetic impactor spacecraft that intentionally crashed into an asteroid to change its orbit - a scenario that could be used to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth if one was ever discovered. The team guided the small DART spacecraft 7 million miles away to the asteroid system Didymos and deliberately impacted its 500-foot-wide secondary body Dimorphos. DART’s impact altered Dimorphos’ orbit by 33 minutes, a result 27 times greater than the mission’s goal of 73 seconds. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory built and operated the DART spacecraft and managed the mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
The Michael Collins Trophy is awarded annually by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. #CollinsTrophy

[@mikehelton1453]

I went out to the Udvar-Hasey Museum to attend the Trophy presentation, but found it was closed to the public. What?! Such a historic event should be available to anybody to share in the celebration. Also, I believe the mission was paid for by tax payers. If it was a private company that did the mission, I can understand having the doors shut, but a tax payer mission should have all events open.