DART impacts Didymos

None of the over 27,000 near-Earth objects

(NEOs) detected by NASA’s Center for NEO Studies currently present a risk of impacting Earth, but that doesn’t mean we should sit around and wait for a potential asteroid impact to start planning mitigation strategies. Launched in November

2021, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will test a brute-force approach to the potential problem of an asteroid impact. In late September 2022, DART will complete its journey to the double asteroid system Dimorphos and Didymos. Once there, DART will slam into Dimorphos, the smaller of the two bodies, while travelling at a speed of around 24,000 kilometres (15,000 miles) per hour in an attempt to change the system’s orbit. While this will be a nudge in cosmic terms, changing the orbit by just one per cent, NASA engineers will be watching closely to see if a kinetic impact like this is enough to save our planet from potential disaster.

“A brute-force approach to the problem of an asteroid impact”