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

(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—