NASA is planning to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid. Here's why

Sep 23, 2022

Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos binary system.

NASA will complete the world’s first full-scale planetary defence mission. Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

Svetla Ben-Itzhak

Assistant Professor of Space and International Relations, Air University

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The orbits of thousands of asteroids (in blue) cross paths with the orbits of planets (in white), including Earth’s.

Millions of cosmic bodies, like asteroids and comets, orbit the Sun and often crash into the Earth. Image: NASA/JPL

Near-Earth asteroids discovered by NASA.

The likely next asteroid of substantial size to potentially hit Earth is asteroid 2005 ED224. Image: NASA/JPL

This crater near Flagstaff, Arizona, was created when an asteroid estimated to be 160 feet (50 meters) across crashed into Earth around 50,000 years ago. Image: USGS/D. Roddy via Wikimedia Commons

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