ANU astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Brad Tucker says NASA is getting ready for the DART mission to test asteroid deflection.
“This is an exciting mission called DART – the Double Asteroid Redirection Test – this is essentially ‘can we deflect an asteroid if we need to’,” he told Sky News Australia.Dr Tucker said the test would be conducted on a twin asteroid system consisting of Didymos and Dimorphos and neither are a threat to Earth.
“The goal here is can we nudge one of them enough so that if we did have a hazardous asteroid – again we don’t have one that we’re worried about – if we did have one could we nudge it enough so it wouldn’t hit the Earth,” he said.Dr Tucker said the collision would occur at approximately 9:17am Tuesday AEST.
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