An asteroid millions of kilometres away is about to be struck by a NASA spacecraft in a first-of-its-kind test of "defend the world" technology.

ET reported that the Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART), a NASA spacecraft, will strike the asteroid on Monday at a speed of 14,000 mph.

The asteroid's partner will receive a shove from the hit, tethering orbit. This implies that we will have the opportunity to combat any deadly asteroids that come our way in the future.

Although the crash will be captured by cameras and telescopes, it will take months to ascertain whether it altered the object's orbit. Dart's launch the previous fall marked the beginning of this $325 million planetary defence trial.

Dimorphos, a poor supporter of Didymos that was found in 1996, is the targeted asteroid. Didymos has marked the supplies it will need to make a moonlet. It is not a threat to Earth, according to NASA.

Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University and the head of the mission team, predicted that the asteroid would not be destroyed by the collision.

An estimated 1 million kilogrammes of rocks and dirt would be launched into space as a result of the collision. The moonlet's location will be slightly altered by the nudge.