A NASA mission to slam a spacecraft into an asteroid to determine if its trajectory can be changed took off from California on Tuesday.
NASA launched a spacecraft with a single mission, smashing into an asteroid at 15,000 mph.
DART, NASA’s first mission to test a spacecraft that could one day defend Earth from a dangerous space rock, takes off early in the morning.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, was launched from Earth to see if crashing a spaceship into an asteroid could nudge it into an alternative orbit. If the test is successful, the results will be useful if NASA and other space organizations ever need to deflect an asteroid to rescue Earth from a disastrous collision.
The DART spacecraft is set to launch from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:20 a.m. Eastern time aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
For the first time, NASA is crashing DART into an asteroid to test a form of planetary defense that could one day spare a city, or even the entire world, from a devastating asteroid impact.
DART will be a confirmed weapon in NASA’s planetary defense arsenal if everything goes according to plan. Should another asteroid come close to colliding with Earth, the world’s space agencies would be confident that an asteroid missile-like DART would be able to deflect the space rock.
The spacecraft will make nearly one complete circle around the sun after launch before colliding with Dimorphos, a football-field-sized asteroid that orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. The two asteroids are known as binary systems because one is a mini-moon to the other. The two asteroids make one full circle around the sun every time they collide.
