NASA’s will launch Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission Nov. 23, 2021 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
- 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.
- Its target is the binary near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its moonlet, which pose no threat to Earth.
- DART is directed by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland with support from several NASA centers.
(Source: NASA)
