© Nasa
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If all went well, NASA launched DART at 4:20 a.m. (our time) this morning. That stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test. Basically it’s a space ball that has to crash into asteroid Dimorphos at a dizzying speed, in order to change its orbit a little bit.
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Arthur De Meyer
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It kinda resembles the plot of the movie Armageddon. In it, Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck must blow up an asteroid on its way to Earth with an atomic bomb. To be clear, this NASA probe does not carry a bomb, nor is the Earth in danger. It is a test, in case an asteroid really threatens our Earth. That’s why NASA wants to test whether it’s possible to make an asteroid change course, just in case…
With DART they are going to crash a space probe as hard as possible on the surface of an asteroid. The spacecraft has to travel 11 million kilometers to aim autonomously at an object with a diameter of 160 meters. It is also a good opportunity for NASA to test a new type of solar-powered space engine.
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