Once DART has been destroyed, ground-based space telescopes will evaluate Didymos and Dimorphos to see just how much the orbit has changed.

In recent weeks, a team from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory has been assessing the asteroid pair from a distance, making sure we have a firm understanding of the asteroids' orbits. The carefully arranged death dive will destroy the DART and, if all goes to plan, alter the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos ever so slightly. The mission is designed as a test run of planetary defense with the intention of proving that a deep-space collision can alter the orbit of a space rock. The asteroid Dimorphos, which circles a larger asteroid known as Didymos, poses no threat to Earth. We've got all the info you need to watch the grand finale live right here, including livestream links from two cameras in deep space.įirst, we should reiterate there's no need to be alarmed. 24, 2021, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test probe will make its final death dive into the asteroid Dimorphos, colliding with the space rock at about 14,000 miles per hour. After launching atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Nov. 26, NASA's DART spacecraft will be no more. NASA and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have confirmed that DART collided with Dimorphos at 4:14 p.m.

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