NASA will intercept an asteroid in 2022!
Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) LICIACube prior to the Didymos binary system impact. Credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben.
NASA will intercept an asteroid in 2022!
The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission it already has a date for its first test flight to evaluate the technology which aims to defend the planet from dangerous asteroid impacts that come from space. Its release is scheduled for the 06:24 UTC (10:24 am in Brazil) on the 24th of November, and will be taken into space on a SpaceX company Falcon 9 rocket, which will depart from Vandenberg Special Forces Base in Santa Barbara, California.
This will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique, which aims to divert the trajectory of asteroids, impacting them with one or more large spacecraft, and thus avoiding a possible catastrophic collision on our planet.
To continue reading this article, please visit the link below…