NASA will collide with an asteroid to protect Earth.

Dimorphos is a lifeless world. A 160-m moonlet is orbiting the Didymos, a 780-m asteroid. Didymos Dimorphos is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, two million kilometres away from Earth.

Astronomers will concentrate on Dimorphos on September 26 at 02:14 ET. At 28,200 km/h, NASA's DART probe will deliberately strike the moonlet (17,500 mph).

The planet is in peril. Near-Earth asteroids (NEAS), which circle the sun within 45 million kilometres (28 million miles) of Earth, are monitored by NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

Although it appears to be a safe miss distance, space debris may collide with an NEA, changing its trajectory and sending it in our direction.

There are 855 NEAS measuring at least 1 km and more than 10,000 measuring at least 140 m, according to the CNEOS survey. 29,801 NEAS of various sizes are listed on CNEOS.

As a first test of the novel technique, NASA built DART to intercept and deflect Didymos-Dimorphos on November 23, 2021. a two-spacecraft