NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, launched Wednesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-spacex-launch-dart-first-test-mission-to-defend-planet-earth. 

Just one part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy, DART – built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland – will impact a known asteroid that is not a threat to Earth. Its goal is to slightly change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.

The spacecraft will move around the sun and is supposed to smash into the asteroid Dimorphos in an effort to learn more about how we might protect Earth from an incoming space rock. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2298530-nasas-dart-mission-will-try-to-deflect-an-asteroid-by-flying-into-it/#ixzz7DQFIqbV7. If the mission succeeds, it could demonstrate for the first time humanity’s ability to punch a potentially hazardous asteroid away from Earth.

The $324 million DART mission is unusual for NASA, a civilian agency that focuses mainly on exploration, climate monitoring and hunting for signs of past life in our solar system. While it coordinates with and relies on the U.S. Department of Defense for some activities, NASA has not traditionally been responsible for leading efforts to protect the United States — or Earth, for that matter — from any security threat.

That changed in 2005, when Congress assigned the agency the imperative of protecting the planet from dangerous objects that orbit the sun and have the bad habit of occasionally crossing paths with our world. That includes tracking tens of thousands of so-called near-Earth asteroids large enough to wreak catastrophic damage. 

“DART is turning science fiction into science fact and is a testament to NASA’s proactivity and innovation for the benefit of all,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “In addition to all the ways NASA studies our universe and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this test will help prove out one viable way to protect our planet from a hazardous asteroid should one ever be discovered that is headed toward Earth.”

READ MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/science/nasa-dart-mission-asteroid.html