The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft, the first test in the world to tests a technology to defend the Earth from possible dangers of asteroids or cometss, will hit its target on September 26.
As reported by NASA, the impact with the asteroid Dimorphos will occur at 7:14 p.m. local time (23:14 GMT) and poses no threat to Earth.
This test will show that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to an asteroid and intentionally collide with it to change the asteroid’s displacement.
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Thanks to measurement with ground-based telescopes, DART will provide important data to help you better preparein case an asteroid is ever discovered that could pose an impact hazard.
The DART spacecraft, built and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) for NASA, will travel millions of kilometers autonomously before deliberately impacting Dimorphos, a small asteroid revolving around a larger one called Didymos. , with the aim of slightly altering its orbit.