NASA's 'Armageddon'-style Asteroid Deflection Mission Takes Off Next Month

NASA has a launch date for that most Hollywood of missions, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which is basically a dry run of the movie "Armageddon." From a report: Unlike the film, this will not involve nukes, oil rigs or Aerosmith, but instead is a practical test of our ability to change the trajectory of an asteroid in a significant and predictable way. The DART mission, managed by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (!), involves sending a pair of satellites out to a relatively nearby pair of asteroids, known as the Didymos binary. It's one large-ish asteroid, approximately 780 meters across -- that's Didymos proper -- and a 160-meter "moonlet" in its orbit.

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