DART MISSION BY NASA
- NASA will launch the agency’s first planetary defense test mission named the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
- DART is a planetary defense-driven test of technologies for preventing an impact of Earth by a hazardous asteroid
- DART is a suicide mission that aims to test the newly developed technology that would allow a spacecraft to crash into an asteroid and change its course
- DART’s target asteroid Dimorphos (small moonlet) is NOT a threat to Earth.
- Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos
- DART is a low-cost spacecraft that uses hydrazine propellant for manoeuvring the spacecraft