In a first test of its planetary defense efforts, NASA's going to shove an asteroid
NASA is about to launch the first mission of its new planetary defense office. A spacecraft will attempt to knock a small asteroid off course by ramming into it.
NASA is about to launch an unprecedented mission to knock an asteroid slightly off-course.
In the first real-world test of a technique that could someday be used to protect Earth from a threatening space rock, a spacecraft is scheduled to blast off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, November 23 at 10:20 pm PST.
The golf-cart-sized spacecraft will travel to an asteroid that's over 6 million miles away — and poses no danger to Earth — and ram into it. Scientists will then watch to see how the asteroid's trajectory changes.
NASA has identified and tracked almost all of the nearby asteroids of a size
