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NASA’s DART mission to attempt to deflect a near-Earth asteroid

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On September 26, NASA’s ‘Double Asteroid Redirection Test,’ or DART, will deflect an asteroid.

The spacecraft will attempt to deflect the binary asteroid system Didymos.

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DART was launched in November 2021 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

It will use a ‘kinetic impactor’ to deflect an asteroid for the first time.

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The DART spacecraft will try to deflect the binary asteroid Didymos and its moonlet Dimorphos.

The probe will strike the asteroid at 6.6km/s (23,760km/h).

This will aid in more effectively determining DART’s kinetic impact.

It will also help determine whether deliberately crashing a 500kg spacecraft is a viable method of changing the trajectory of an asteroid.

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