DART spacecraft is on it's way
Can we change the motion of an asteroid?
The DART Mission is set to be the first to try!
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is a spacecraft designed to impact an asteroid as a test of technology to see if it can change the motion of an asteroid in space. The goal of the mission is to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future. DART’s target is the binary near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its moonlet, which pose no threat to Earth.
This mission is targeted to launch at 1:21 a.m. EST, Nov. 24 (06:21 UTC), aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
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Today's launch (Tuesday, Nov. 24) was a success and DART spacecraft has now separated from the Falcon 9 second stage and is flying on it's own, which happened live approx 45 minutes ago.
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https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart/dart-news
