NASA is set to launch a mission that will see a spacecraft crash into an asteroid in a bid to smash it off course.
The double asteroid redirection test (Dart) will test defence technologies for preventing a hazardous asteroid impacting Earth.
It aims to prove that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it - called a kinetic impact - at roughly six kilometres per second.
The collision will change the speed of the moonlet in its orbit around the main body by a fraction of 1%.
But this will change the orbital period of the moonlet by several minutes - enough to be observed and measured using telescopes on Earth.
Dart's target is not a threat to Earth, and is the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos (Greek for two forms), which orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos (Greek for twin).
https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2021/1123/1262631-nasa-spacecraft-asteroid/
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