NASA will crash a spacecraft into an asteroid to help us prepare for future asteroid impacts
Will an asteroid ever strike Earth again, like it did 66 million years ago with the dinosaurs?
Today, NASA is preparing for another asteroid impact – should it ever happen again! – by crashing a spacecraft into a small asteroid.
This crash will happen tonight at 7:14 PM ET with a spacecraft known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The asteroid, called Dimorphos, is about 500 feet in diameter, and is actually the moon of a larger asteroid called Didymos.
The DART’s impact is intended to change the orbit speed of Dimorphos by about 1 percent. The DART will take pictures as it heads toward its crash, while a companion probe – called Light Italian Cubesat – will record the impact of the DART mission.
This experiment is being done with a distant asteroid, and poses no risk to Earth. Doing so will help us prepare for diverting an asteroid if one ever seems to be headed for our home planet!
Interested in learning more? Catch a show this week in LSC’s Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium, the biggest planetarium in America! Click here to see what’s playing and get tickets.
