CNN World SPACE + SCIENCE | NASA’s DART mission will deliberately crash into an asteroid’s moon in the name of planetary defense

This is an illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos system.

(CNN) – A spacecraft that will deliberately crash into an asteroid is preparing to launch.

The DART mission, or NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, will lift off at 10:20 p.m. PT on November 23 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

After launching in November, NASA will test its asteroid deflection technology in September 2022 to see how it impacts the motion of a near-Earth asteroid in space.

The target of this asteroid deflection technology is Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Didymos. This will be the agency’s first full-scale demonstration of this type of technology on behalf of planetary defense.  —read more—