Nasa prepares to crash spacecraft into asteroid in ‘planetary defense test’ – live

Thanks to the LICIACube, we will be able to watch the collision between the Dart and Dimorphos live.

The cameras have been working. LICIA captured images of a crescent Earth and a star cluster called the Seven Sisters.

The image part of the project is managed by the Italian space agency, while the overall responsibility for managing Dart rests with the applied physics laboratory in Maryland.

There is more information about LICIA cube here.

We published an explainer about the Dart mission earlier in the year.

There is no current threat to Earth from an asteroid, which is why this test mission is taking place.

It is a subject that has been in the public eye recently, notably through last year'sNetflix comedy Don't Look Up, in which Earth faces impending doom from a menacing asteroid and barely anyone seems to care.

There are a lot of people who want to know if humanity can be saved from a giant asteroid hitting Earth.

The first step towards finding out will be taken by Nasa at 7.14pm. The moon of the asteroid Didymos will be deliberately crashed into by the space agency.

The aim of the Dart mission is to see if the asteroid can be altered by the force of the impact in order to prevent Armageddon.

The first of a series of missions to assess our readiness for the threat of a large asteroid impact is the brainchild of the $325 million planetary defense test.

We will bring you all the developments over the next few hours, but before we start, let's take a look at the mission itself.