NASA To Nudge Asteroid To Keep It From Threatening Earth
The U.S. space agency plans to conduct a mission next month to deflect a pair of asteroids far out in deep space to keep them from threatening Earth.
Dubbed the DART Mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) will send spacecraft to a pair of asteroids — the Didymos binary — on November 24 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
NASA considers any near-Earth object (NEO) as “potentially hazardous” if it comes within 0.05 astronomical units (4.6 million miles) and measures more than 460 feet in diameter, said the Mail. “According to the U.S. space agency, there are just over 25,000 NEOs, but many more are waiting to be discovered.”
“DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique, which involves sending one or more large, high-speed spacecraft into the path of an asteroid in space to change its motion,” NASA said in a statement. (Read more from “NASA To Nudge Asteroid To Keep It From Threatening Earth” HERE)
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