NASA Is About to Crash Into an Asteroid. Here’s How to Watch.

A visitor from our planet is going to knock on the asteroid's door.

DART is going to collide with Dimorphos, a small asteroid that is the moon of Didymos. NASA launched DART last year to test a technique that could one day be used to defend against planetary threats. You have to know what to know about the mission.

At 7:14 p.m., DART is going to crash into Dimorphos. On Monday.

The end of this mission will be broadcasted by NASA Television. You can see it in the video player.

If you don't want to watch a stream of photos from the craft as it closes in on the asteroid, NASA's media channel will start broadcasting them at 6 pm.

NASA isn't just wasting money on a fancy spaceship. The agency is working hard.

Congress mandated in 2005 that NASA find 90 percent of near- Earth asteroids that are big enough to destroy a city. Congress didn't give NASA enough money to complete the task, so it's more than half done.

While searching for deadly space rocks, the agency is also working on ways to respond to a threat.

The DART mission is different from the movie. It's not a good idea to blow up an asteroid. The mission is a proof of principle demonstration that hitting an oncoming asteroid with a projectile can change it's trajectory.

It could be enough to change the trajectory of the asteroid from a direct hit to a missed opportunity.

Dimorphos is a small asteroid that is 500 feet in diameter and is in close proximity to Didymos, a half mile wide asteroid. There is a distance of about 0.6 miles between the two.

DART will guide itself to its demise with people at the mission operations center in Maryland mostly watching.

Elena Adams is the DART mission systems engineer. You can't really give any commands at that point. You have to be very precise in how you control the spaceship.

Until about an hour before the crash, Dimorphos will not be seen by DART's camera. The flight path will be adjusted and then it will collide.

It is difficult to hit a small object in space.

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The asteroid will get closer to Didymos if DART and Dimorphos connect. The structure of Dimorphos will affect the magnitude of the change.

The change will follow the basics of a physics 101 problem if Dimorphos is solid and DART only carves a small crater. DART will cause the asteroid to move closer to Didymos and speed up because of it.

If Dimorphos is more like a pile of rubble held together by gravity, it will cause a deep crater and send a shower of debris into space. The rock will push against the asteroid. The Dimorphos will descend closer to Didymos.