BBC Sky at Night

DART A mission with impact

Over its four and a half billion year-lifetime, Earth has been battered and pummelled by cosmic collisions. Some 50,000 years ago, a small asteroid slammed into northern Arizona, leaving a 1,200m-wide impact crater and turning the area into a wasteland. A similar impact today would have catastrophic consequences – unless we could find a way to divert the space rock. Next year, NASA will test the technology to do just that, by bring a half-tonne spacecraft into a small asteroid in an attempt to deflect its path.

During a launch window that stretches from 24 November to 15 February, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will send the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft on a collision course • with the small moon of asteroid 65803 Didymos. In late September or early October 2022, DART will smash into the 160m-diameter object, giving it a decent kick. Telescopes on Earth will measure the resulting change in the moonlet’s orbit, while

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