Yahoo Finance Watch Live: NASA's Planetary Defense Test Crashes Spacecraft into Asteroid 7 Million Miles from Earth
NASA is conducting a crash test roughly 7 million miles from Earth.
During the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) set for Monday, a spacecraft will collide with a 525-ft. wide asteroid called Dimorphos if all goes according to plan.
The crash, scheduled for 7:14 p.m. EDT, is going to be monitored on cameras and telescopes.
Watch the live feed of the test above.
The test is in preparation for a potential need in the future to defend the planet against asteroids and comets on a collision course with Earth.
"This really is about asteroid deflection, not disruption," Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist and mission team leader at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, told the AP. "This isn't going to blow up the asteroid. It isn't going to put it into lots of pieces."
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It'll take days before scientists understand if the asteroid actually changed its course after the planetary defense test, which reportedly costs $325 million.
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Dimorphos, which orbits a parent asteroid called Didymos, is not a threat, NASA says.
Photo by NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS APL/STEVE GRIBBEN HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
According to CBS News, there isn't an asteroid NASA knows to be larger than 459 feet across that has "significant chance" of hitting Earth in the next 100 years.
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Still, the collision itself is being looked at as monumental in the "history of humankind," per NASA planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson.
"This demonstration is extremely important to our future here on the Earth and life on Earth," Johnson said, according to CBS News.
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The Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory is managing Dart, and the navigation of the spacecraft will reportedly be able to tell the smaller asteroid target from its larger sister asteroid before it makes impact. NASA says there's a less than 10% chance that Dart will miss its target, per the AP.
"This is stuff of science-fiction books and really corny episodes of 'StarTrek' from when I was a kid, and now it's real," NASA program scientist Tom Statler told the AP.
NASA is holding a 6 p.m. EDT briefing Monday, as well as a second at 8 p.m. after the impact.
