Technicians prepare to move NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft from a shipping container onto a work stand inside the Astrotech Space Operations Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in this image from Oct. 4, 2021.
DART was launched on Nov. 23, 2021, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg. The spacecraft will intentionally smash into the moonlet Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, to see if this method of asteroid deflection—known as the kinetic impactor technique—would be a viable way to protect our planet if an asteroid on a collision course with Earth were discovered in the future.
Image Credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Aaron Taubm