Targeting an Asteroid
NASA’s first planetary defense mission—the APL-led Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)—launches in 2021. DART is the first mission to demonstrate what’s known as the kinetic impactor technique, which involves striking an asteroid to shift its orbit and deflect it from Earth. The APL-built DART spacecraft will reach its target, the small moon of the binary asteroid Didymos, in 2022.