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Reuters

A spacecraft that must ultimately crash to succeed was launched late on Tuesday from California on a Nasa mission to demonstrate the world’s first planetary defence system, designed to deflect an asteroid from a potential doomsday collision with Earth.
The DART spacecraft soared into the night sky at 10.21pm Pacific time on Tuesday from Vandenberg US Space Force Base, about 241km northwest of Los Angeles, carried aboard a SpaceX-owned Falcon 9 rocket.
The launch was shown live on Nasa TV.
The DART payload, about the size of a small car, was released from the booster minutes after launch to begin a 10-month journey into deep space, some 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometres) from Earth.
Rare ‘earthgrazer’ meteor flew 300km across the US – then vanished
Once there DART will test its ability to alter an asteroid’s trajectory with sheer kinetic force, ploughing into it at high speed to nudge the space boulder off course just enough to keep our planet out of harm’s way.
The asteroid DART is aimed at poses no actual threat and is tiny compared with the cataclysmic Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, leading to extinction of the dinosaurs. But scientists say smaller asteroids are far more common and pose a greater theoretical danger in the near term.
DART’s target is an asteroid “moonlet” the size of a football stadium that orbits a chunk of rock five times larger in a binary asteroid system named Didymos, the Greek word for twin.
The team behind DART, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, chose the Didymos system because its relative proximity to Earth and dual-asteroid configuration make it ideal for observing the results of the impact.

The plan is to fly the DART spacecraft directly into the moonlet, called Dimorphos, at 15,000 miles per hour (24,000kph), bumping it hard enough to shift its orbital track around the larger asteroid.
Cameras on the impactor and on a briefcase-sized mini-spacecraft released from DART about 10 days beforehand will record the collision and beam images back to Earth. Ground-based telescopes will measure how much the moonlet’s orbit around Didymos changes.
The DART team expects to shorten Dimorphos’ orbital track by 10 minutes but would consider at least 73 seconds a success. A small nudge to an asteroid millions of miles away would be sufficient to safely divert it.
DART is the latest of several Nasa missions of recent years to explore and interact with asteroids, primordial rocky remnants from the solar system’s formation 4.6 billion years ago.

Last month, Nasa launched a probe on a voyage to the Trojan asteroid clusters orbiting near Jupiter, while the grab-and-go spacecraft OSIRES-REx is on its way back to Earth with a sample collected last October from the asteroid Bennu.
The Dimorphos moonlet is one of the smallest astronomical objects to receive a permanent name and is one of 27,500 known near-Earth asteroids of all sizes tracked by Nasa.
Although all none poses a foreseeable hazard to humankind, Nasa estimates many more asteroids remain undetected in the near-Earth vicinity.
The DART spacecraft, cube-shaped with two rectangular solar arrays, is due to rendezvous with the Didymos-Dimorphos pair in late September 2022.
Nasa put the entire cost of the DART project at US$330 million, well below that of many of the space agency’s most ambitious science missions.


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Space

Nasa launches mission to smash spacecraft into asteroid

The DART spacecraft lifted off on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Photo: Nasa via AP

An artist’s illustration shows the DART spacecraft approaching the Dimorphos and Didymos asteroids. Photo: EPA-EFE/Nasa/Johns Hopkins APL

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the DART spacecraft onboard in California. Photo: EPA-EFE/Nasa

SpaceX returns 4 Nasa astronauts to Earth, ending 200-day mission on International Space Station

The Crew-2 SpaceX Dragon capsule with its parachutes deployed just before splashing down off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. Photo: AFP

This screengrab taken from the SpaceX live webcast shows a view of the Crew-2 SpaceX Dragon capsule dubbed "Endeavour" as they return to earth on November 8, 2021. - A SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts left the International Space Station bound for Earth on Monday after spending six busy months aboard the orbital outpost. Since arriving on April 24, the crew of two Americans, a Frenchman and one Japanese astronaut conducted hundreds of experiments and helped upgrade the station's solar panels. (Photo by various sources / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO / SPACEX " - NO MARKETING - NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

FILE - From front left, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, NASA astronaut Megan McArthur, NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide leave the Operation and Checkout Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, April 23, 2021. High wind off the Florida coast has prompted SpaceX to delay the return of four space station astronauts. They were supposed to leave the International Space Station on Sunday, Nov. 7, 2021 with their capsule splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday morning. (AP Photo/John Raoux, file)

Nasa to deflect asteroid in test of ‘planetary defence’

An artist’s illustration shows the Dart spacecraft from behind as it approaches the Didymos binary system. Image: Nasa/Johns Hopkins APL via AFP

News

World

United States & Canada


The DART spacecraft lifted off aboard a SpaceX rocket from California on a mission to deflect an asteroid from a potential doomsday collision with Earth
DART is due to smash into the Dimorphos asteroid in September next year



The DART spacecraft lifted off aboard a SpaceX rocket from California on a mission to deflect an asteroid from a potential doomsday collision with Earth.


SpaceX

United States

Nasa launches mission to smash spacecraft into asteroid

The DART spacecraft lifted off aboard a SpaceX rocket from California on a mission to deflect an asteroid from a potential doomsday collision with Earth DART is due to smash into the Dimorphos asteroid in September next year

The DART spacecraft lifted off aboard a SpaceX rocket from California on a mission to deflect an asteroid from a potential doomsday collision with Earth

DART is due to smash into the Dimorphos asteroid in September next year