According to the official statement, the spacecraft will collide with the target asteroid Dimorphos at 02:14 a.m.
Although Dimorphos does not pose a risk toEarth, the test will allow NASA to evaluate whether a spacecraft impact can be used to change the trajectory of a hypothetical hazardous asteroid on a collision course with the planet.
Even a small change in trajectory is significantwill change the asteroid's path over months and years, so only a relatively small push is needed. However, the DART spacecraft is moving towards Dimorphos at 24,000 km/h. This means that the collision is likely to be a spectacular sight. Although people will be able to watch this event only from the Earth, at a distance of 11 million km from the epicenter.
DART spacecraft launched on boardSpaceX Falcon rockets on November 24, 2021. The device is designed to test the technique of "kinetic impact" - the displacement of an asteroid from orbit, so the head of the AIM project, ESA, Ian Carnell called it a "kinetic impactor". About a month later, the DART spacecraft returned the first images from space.
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