Key Feature:
NASA is developing the first-ever mission that will deflect a near-Earth asteroid, and help test the systems that will allow mankind to protect the planet from potential cosmic body impacts in future.
- The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — which is being designed and would be built and managed by the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
- DART would be NASA‘s first mission to demonstrate what‘s known as kinetic impact or technique — striking the asteroid to shift its orbit — to defend against a potential future asteroid impact.
- The target for DART is an asteroid, Didymos that will have a distant approach to Earth in October 2022 and then again in 2024.
- The Didymos asteroid system has been closely studied since 2003. It has been classified as potentially hazardous asteroid.
