The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be NASA’s first-ever mission that will deflect a near-Earth asteroid, and help test the systems that will allow mankind to protect the planet from potential cosmic body impacts in the future.
The target for DART is an asteroid that will have a distant approach to Earth in October 2022, and then again in 2024.
The asteroid is called Didymos – Greek for “twin” -because it is an asteroid binary system that consists of two bodies: Didymos A, about 780 metres in size, and a smaller asteroid orbiting it called Didymos B, about 160 metres in size.
