They will test the plan next year, launching the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) spacecraft aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. (Image: REUTERS)The collision is expected to take place when the asteroid gets within 6.8 million miles of Earth. The moon is 240,000 miles away and the sun is 93 million miles away. On Wednesday a huge asteroid flew past Earth in what NASA called a “close approach”. Dubbed 52768 (1998 OR2), it was around a mile across and passed 3.9 million miles away.

Source: Daily Mirror April 30, 2020 20:43 UTC