A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Crew Dragon capsule, is launched carrying three NASA and one ESA astronauts on a mission to the International Space Station at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. November 10, 2021. REUTERS/Joe Skipper – HP1EHBB063F0G
Beginning in 2017, NASA focused on the so-called DART double asteroid redirection test, in which SpaceX was selected as the partner for the rocket launch. DART is a collision avoidance experiment for near-Earth objects (NEO). It is hoped to use artificially launched objects to collide with asteroids to see if the kinetic energy effect produced is sufficient to change direction. The current experimental object is double Asteroid Didimos.
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Today SpaceX announced that it has completed the static ignition test and aims to launch the Falcon 9 rocket at 10:21 pm Pacific time on November 23, 2021. The target asteroid Didimos is a double asteroid system consisting of a host star with a diameter of about 780 meters and another satellite with a diameter of about 160 meters. It is calculated that it will approach the Earth in 2022, but will not enter Orbit, so an error in the experiment will not bring danger to the earth.
There will be such a hypothesis that the NASA authorities have identified that in the next 100 years, there will be at least 23 objects in danger of approaching the Earth’s orbit, and DART is one of the experimental solutions.