NASA’s robotic DART spacecraft was launched Tuesday night, starting its 10-month journey to crash into an asteroid. A SpaceX rocket blasted off from California late Tuesday to demonstrate this first-of-its-kind planetary defence system. The system is designed to change an asteroid trajectory to avoid a potential doomsday collision with Earth.
The DART mission will use the kinetic energy from the spacecraft to nudge space boulders just enough to avoid our planet. The target for this mission is not on a path to hit Earth in the foreseeable future. It is also a very small fraction of the size of the Chicxulub asteroid that impacted Earth around 66 million years ago.
However, scientists said smaller asteroids are actually far more common and can pose a greater theoretical risk to Earth in the near future. The project which took a ride atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket cost about $330 million US. DART will have a 10-month journey before crashing into the asteroid around 11 million kilometres from Earth. If all foes will it will hit the asteroid 160 metres across at a speed of 24,000 km/h
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