The relentless march of technology is allowing scientists to consider the possibility of human exploration of the Solar System and beyond but, even as we dream of the day where man sets foot on Mars, we have to consider how we’ll protect our home planet from major threats in the future. The possibility of an asteroid-borne apocalypse is a real one, and NASA wants to make sure mankind is prepared to defend itself from such events.
To that end, NASA is already planning the first real planetary defense test mission. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART for short) is a planned mission that will send a spacecraft designed as a “kinetic impactor” directly into a non-threatening asteroid in order to test the feasibility of using a similar system for avoiding an asteroid strike in the future.
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NASA’s first planetary defense mission will send a spacecraft crashing into an asteroid originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 3 Jan 2019 at 17:15:01 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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