Falcon 9 helped pull NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft across the sky and into orbit. NASA intends for the spacecraft to redirect the 530 feet-in-diameter asteroid moon Dimorphos between September 26 and October 1, 2022. Although NASA’s planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson said that there is currently no “significant asteroid impact threat to Earth,” the mission to slightly alter Dimorphos’ orbit is a huge first step towards redirecting an unlikely, but still potentially devastating, event. Why not, right?
