Seriously.

A NASA mission, which will demonstrate an “asteroid deflection technique” just got promoted to the design phase, reports Gizmodo.

Called DART, the plan includes a “refrigerator-sized spacecraft” which will “smash into a non-threatening asteroid”, causing it to move ever so slightly from its original flight path.

DART, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test (not Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology), is being designed by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory:

In what will be the first demonstration of its kind, DART will be tested on the smaller of two non-threatening asteroids in the Didymos system. The two asteroids in this binary pairing are known as Didymos A, which measures about a half-mile in diameter, and Didymos B, which is about 530 feet wide.

NASA is hoping to smash a spacecraft into Didymos B in 2024.

These rocky objects are similar in size and composition to many asteroids, including those that could wreak havoc on Earth.

Here’s a little example of what it would look like – smash included:

Other than potentially saving planet Earth from a fatal end, DART will “allow scientists to better determine the effects of such impacts on asteroids, and the data gleaned from this mission could inform future efforts—including a mission to deflect an actual Earth-bound asteroid”:

This test will let scientists know how heavy and fast a kinetic impactor needs to be, or how many kinetic impactors might be required to sufficiently move a single target.

But, before you get too excited, you should know this: although the mission has moved into the design phase, that does not mean that it will actually go ahead.

It’s all just fun and games in the land of NASA.

[source:gizmodo]