Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission

First some background not provided in the video upload: Didymos + Dimorphos

“DART is the first mission devoted to planetary defense, to do something about an asteroid threat, to prevent it from hitting the Earth if you needed to,” says Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead and a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, which developed the craft in partnership with NASA. Dimorphos and the larger asteroid it orbits are not a threat, she quickly adds. “This is just a test.”

Why NASA Really, Really Wants to Slam a Spacecraft Into an Asteroid

The DART mission is scheduled to launch early Wednesday. It will crash into an asteroid to see if it's possible to deflect one.

Ramin Skibba

Wired |

NASA is about to launch a craft designed to crash itself directly into a hurtling space rock at 15,000 mph

[...] "If a hazardous asteroid is ever actually bearing toward Earth, slamming a spacecraft—or a “kinetic impactor”—into it is just one tool at humanity’s disposal. NASA, ESA, and other space agencies have also been exploring other approaches, like positioning a spacecraft close by as a “gravity tractor” to pull it onto a different course, or detonating a nuclear explosion nearby to force it away. . .The advantage of having an early warning if an asteroid is on a collision course is that only a tiny shift in trajectory would be needed to save the day—and the DART mission is a dry run at doing that. It will be perhaps the only time NASA scientists will celebrate the destruction of one of their spacecraft. DART will continually stream images back to Earth, showing the tiny dot representing Didymos and Dimorphos as it grows in size and brightness, with the last image of the asteroids being sent back a few seconds before the crash. . ."