Nasa is livestreaming the mission with video and commentary on its website and social media channels. How will we know if the mission is successful? Children of the 1980s will recall the popular video game Asteroids in which the objective was to change the direction of menacing space rocks (and then destroy them, which is not the goal of Dart). The plan is that the 15,000mph (24,140km/h) impact of the Dart spacecraft will be enough to nudge Dimorphos from its current trajectory and on to a different path. Nasa wants to know if it has the capability to protect us if such a scenario ever occurs. Why is the mission taking place?Īnybody who has watched the recent Netflix comedy Don’t Look Up will be familiar with the threat, however remote, of an asteroid big enough to be world-ending hurtling towards, and one day colliding with Earth. The asteroid and its moon were chosen for their proximity of about 6.8m miles away, but neither pose a threat to our planet before or after the collision. The agency has targeted the near-Earth asteroid Didymos, more specifically its 525ft (160 metre) diameter moon Dimorphos, into which it will crash a small car-sized spacecraft at 7.14pm EST (12.14am BST, 9.14am AEST). The acronym stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, the first “planetary defense” experiment conducted by the US space agency, in association with scientists at Johns Hopkins University, to see if it can alter the trajectory of an asteroid in deep space if one ever comes close enough to threaten Earth. Here’s what’s happening, and why: What is the Nasa Dart mission?
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