The space agency has instructed the help of Elon Musk’s aerospace company with the first-ever attempt to deflect an asteroid by purposely crashing into it. At an astonishing cost of £53 million ($69 million) the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will look to divert any asteroid which threatens the earth’s atmosphere. DART will launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in June 2021.
By October 2002 the spacecraft will attempt to crash into a “Didymoon” which is 540-foot-wide (165 meters) at a speed of 13,500 mph (6 km per second).
The collision is expected to take place when the rock comes within 6.8 million miles (11 million km) of Earth and redirect its course.
To put the distance in perspective the moon is 240,000 miles and the sun is 93 million miles away.
The mission will aim to crash into asteroids at a speed of 13,500mph (Image: GETTY)
The mission will also target another object which is scientifically known as a ‘moonlet’ as NASA states its “more typical of the
