NASA will launch a mission to redirect an asteroid

NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission is scheduled to launch on July 22, 2021. This is a demonstration mission,

which will allow you to understand whether it is possible to usekinetic impact to deflect an asteroid from Earth. It will head towards a tiny binary asteroid system called Didymos (or 65803 Didymos). This double asteroid system poses no threat to Earth.

The largest of the asteroids, Didymos A - about 780 m inin diameter, and smaller, Didymos B is about 160 m. DART will crash into Didymos B because it is close to the typical size of an asteroid that could threaten the Earth in the future.

Scientists have found the oldest remains of a fossilized chicken. She is 66.7 million years old!

DART will reach its goal on September 22, 2021,when the binary asteroid is within 11 million km. from the earth. And in order to get there, he will use a powerful ion engine - NASA's evolutionary xenon accelerator. The engine consists of two main components: a thruster and a power processor. It has yet to be tested.

It became known earlier that it is approaching the Earthasteroid SP1, length from 70 to 160 m. NASA discovered the space object on September 19, the organization entered it in the list of near-Earth. SP1 is as close as possible to Earth at 5.87 million km - 15 times greater than the distance to the moon.