WASHINGTON — NASA plans to test out its first-ever planetary defense mission developed to protect Earth from a possible collision with an asteroid.<br /><br />NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, is the first planetary defense mission in history. Its main objective is to demonstrate a kinetic impact on an asteroid.<br /><br />According to NASA, DART's target is a 150-meter moonlet called Didymos B, a small satellite orbiting a larger near-Earth asteroid called Didymos."<br /><br />The asteroid binary is located roughly 11 million kilometers from Earth. The spacecraft will be guided by an onboard camera and an autonomous real-time navigation system. <br /><br />DART will crash against the moonlet at a speed of roughly 6 kilometers per second. Its objective is to change the speed and direction of the incoming object.<br /><br />The spacecraft is scheduled to launch in June 2021 and expected to hit the asteroid by October 2022.<br /><br />In 2013 a small 18-meter-wide meteor crashed into the Earth's atmosphere and entered over Chelyabinsk, Russia, creating a shockwave that hit six cities across the country.<br /><br />According to NASA, this event is proof of the importance of carrying out preventive planetary defense missions in space.
