A Nasa mission to demonstrate the world's first planetary defence system was launched late on Tuesday from California.
The Dart was launched from the US Space Force Base in California at 10.21pm Pacific time.
Liftoff!
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November 24, 2021.
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Why is a spaceship going into an asteroid?
NASA is Crashing a Spacecraft Into an Asteroid.
The plan is to crash the robot into Dimorphos at 15,000mph and change its path by a fraction. If the mission is successful, it will mean that Nasa and other space agencies can stop an asteroid from hitting Earth.
The Dart is a small vehicle that was released from the booster minutes after launch to begin its journey into deep space.
Dart will test its ability to change an asteroid's trajectory with sheer force. The impactor and mini-spacecraft will be released from Dart about 10 days before the collision to record the collision and beam images back to Earth.
The asteroid being targeted by Dart is small compared to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Smaller asteroids pose a greater theoretical danger in the near term.
The Didymos system is ideal for observing the results of an impact because it is close to Earth and has a dual-asteroid configuration.
The blast-off was broadcasted live on TV.
It is the latest in a long line of missions by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to explore and interact with asteroids.
Last month, a probe on a voyage to the Trojan asteroid clusters was launched by Nasa, while the grab-and-go Osires-Rex is on its way back to Earth with a sample collected in October last year from the asteroid Bennu.
The Dimorphos moonlet is one of the smallest asteroids to receive a permanent name and is one of 27,500 known near-Earth asteroids.
The total cost of the Dart project is $330m, which is less than many of the space agency's most ambitious science missions.
