NASA Will Crash Spacecraft Into Asteroid To Save Earth

This is it. The moment foretold in countless sci-fi movies over the decades. NASA will soon launch a test run of a planet protecting mission.

Called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, the space agency will hurl a spacecraft into an asteroid at 13,500mph in an effort to divert its course. The defense system trial would take place as early as 2020, according to some reports, aimed at a “non-threatening” asteroid.

Andy Cheng of The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and co-lead of the DART project says the experiment will show how they will be able to save Earth, “by knocking the hazardous object into a different flight path.”