NASA Launches 1st Mission to Defend Earth from Deep Space

The  US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is preparing to launch its first-ever mission to defend the earth, by colliding with an asteroid, according to the British newspaper, the Independent.

The US space agency, NASA, said that engineers and scientists from the double asteroid redirection test team known as "DART" have filled the spacecraft with fuel, and conducted several final tests, conducting exercises as they approach the launch scheduled for November 23.

"DART" will be the first demonstration of kinetic impact technology, in which a spacecraft deliberately collides with a known asteroid at high speed to alter the orbit of the asteroid in space, Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defense officer, said in a statement.

On the mission, the spacecraft is scheduled to collide with the small lunar asteroid Dimirvos, which orbits a larger companion asteroid called Didymos, at a speed of about 6 thousand kilometers per second to slightly change its orbit.

The researchers then hope to use ground-based telescopes to measure the effects of the impact on the asteroid system.

Didymos has a diameter of 780 meters, which is equivalent to the height of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

While the small moon Derovos has a diameter of up to 160 meters, the size of a High Roller wheel in Las Vegas.

NASA said the last time Didymus was very close to Earth was in 2003, The statement issued by the agency said the next time would be in 2062.

While none of the space rocks poses any serious threat to Earth, and no known asteroid of this size poses a collision risk to our planet for at least the next century, NASA hopes to enhance the modeling and prediction capabilities of asteroid deflection through this training.