The new space mission, which NASA calls the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), aims to crash a 500-kilogram spacecraft into a fragment of an asteroid binary, 65803 Didymos, called Dimorphous.
Launched in November 2021, DART will attempt to deflect an asteroid from its path using the kinetic effect. The DART mission is part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy to protect Earth in the event an asteroid poses a threat to Earth. The spacecraft, which will crash into the smaller member of the binary asteroid system, will shatter.
DART will arrive in Didymos in September and crash into Dimorphous at around 24,000 kilometers per hour. This asteroid duo poses no threat to our planet. So this will just be a test.
The DART mission was built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) under NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). NASA states that data from the collision will help scientists create mini-effects in a lab and build complex computer models based on those results.
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