NASA is sending a spacecraft to crash into an asteroid — here’s why

In a few days, NASA will send its DART spacecraft into space to crash with an asteroid. The DART mission is a test by NASA to understand if crashing into an asteroid can help protect the earth from future incoming asteroids. This is going to be one interesting NASA mission, and it’s taking place early next week.

DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, and the spacecraft will launch aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. DART’s target asteroid is the near-earth asteroid system ‘Didymos’ which is composed of two asteroids - Didymos and Dimorphos. In this mission, DART will impact Dimorphos which is 160 meters in size and orbits the larger asteroid, Didymos.

How will it work

In this mission, DART will hit Dimorphos and try to change its orbit within the binary system. The DART Investigation Team will then analyse and see whether this actually changes the direction of the asteroid, and how effectively this system works for future planetary defence scenarios. The DART mission is only a test, and the asteroid Dimorphos isn’t a threat to our planet. But this test can help NASA prepare for future collisions.

Past asteroid events

There haven’t been any impact events of an asteroid hitting earth so far other than the one believed to have wiped out dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. More recently in 2013, an asteroid is said to have entered earth’s atmosphere over Russia and exploded above the city of Chelyabinsk. There have also been discoveries of fragments of asteroids that were burned up in the earth’s atmosphere. Just last month, an asteroid the size of a refrigerator passed by the earth. This is said to be the third-closest asteroid to fly close to the earth.

NASA’s DART spacecraft is scheduled to take off on November 24 but it will fly through space for around a year before crashing into Dimorphos.

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