On November 24, at around 11.50 am (IST), NASA will launch the agency’s first planetary defense test mission named the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The main aim of the mission is to test the newly developed technology that would allow a spacecraft to crash into an asteroid and change its course. Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos (Greek for “twin”) which has a diameter of 780 metres. Across the globe, various telescopes will work together and observe the event and study the impact of DART – changes in the moonlet’s orbit. “The timing for the DART impact is when the Didymos system is closest to the Earth.

Source: Indian Express November 11, 2021 17:11 UTC