DART is the world's first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against an asteroid or comet collision.
On Monday, the DART spacecraft is expected to deliberately crash into a 530-foot-wide asteroid calledat a speed of nearly 15,000 miles per hour. The aim is to demonstrate that a spacecraft can deflect an object that could pose an impact threat to the Earth.
"Roughly an object 100 meters in diameter is likely to create a crater about 1 kilometer across on Earth," said Gretchen Benedix, a professor of geology and geophysics with the Space Science and Technology Center and the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Australia's Curtin University. An artist's illustration shows a large asteroid colliding with Earth. NASA's DART mission aims to demonstrate that a spacecraft can deflect an asteroid or comet and defend the planet against a possible collision.The first version of the tool is a simple text interface where you type in certain parameters, such as the size and speed of the object. The simulator provides a commentary of what you might experience at a given distance from the impact.
If an asteroid or comet strikes with sufficient velocity, it will create a fireball—a plume cloud of vaporized rock and heated air that engulfs the crater and the site closest to the impact. Because the average impact velocity on Earth is around 20 kilometers per second, typically you would see one of these fireballs.
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