ANU astrophysicist and cosmologist Dr Brad Tucker says NASA is getting ready for the DART mission to test asteroid deflection.
“This is an exciting mission called DART – the Double Asteroid Redirection Test – this is essentially ‘can we deflect an asteroid if we need to’,” he told Sky News Australia.
“Now the asteroid here, Didymos, poses no danger.”
Dr Tucker said the test would be conducted on a twin asteroid system consisting of Didymos and Dimorphos and neither are a threat to Earth.
“The goal here is can we nudge one of them enough so that if we did have a hazardous asteroid – again we don’t have one that we’re worried about – if we did have one could we nudge it enough so it wouldn’t hit the Earth,” he said.
“This is the name of the game here.”
Dr Tucker said the collision would occur at approximately 9:17am Tuesday AEST.
