NASA plans to conduct a mission next month to deflect a pair of asteroids far out in space, preventing them from colliding with Earth. For the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, also called the DART Mission, NASA will send spacecraft to the pair of asteroids at the end of November, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket […]
NASA plans to conduct a mission next month to deflect a pair of asteroids far out in space, preventing them from colliding with Earth.
For the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, also called the DART Mission, NASA will send spacecraft to the pair of asteroids at the end of November, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
If things go according to plan, DART will smash into one of the two asteroids - known as Didymoon - at roughly 13,500 miles per hour nearly a full year later, on October 2, 2022, per the Daily Wire.
Didymoon is over 500 feet wide and orbits around a space rock called Didymos, which is five times larger.
In 2003, Didymoon got too close to comfort, coming within 3.7 million miles from Earth.
“DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique, which involves sending one or more large, high-speed spacecraft into the path of an asteroid in space to change its motion,” NASA said in a statement.
