Falcon 9 rocket stands on Vandenberg launch pad with NASA asteroid probe – Spaceflight Now: Times Of Nation
These photos show SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket standing on Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, hours before liftoff with NASA’s DART mission, an experiment to test how a spacecraft might deflect a hazardous asteroid away from Earth.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) launcher is awaiting blastoff at 10:21:02 p.m. EST Tuesday (1:21:02 a.m. EST; 0621:02 GMT Wednesday) from Vandenberg, a military launch facility on California’s Central Coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft is sitting on top of the rocket. The Falcon 9 will send the spacecraft — about the size of a small car — on a course toward a pair of companion asteroids named Didymos and Dimorphos.
DART will collide with Dimorphos — the smaller of the two — at around 15,000 mph (24,000 kilometers per hour) next September. Scientists will use ground-based telescopes to measure how much the impact, which will destroy the DART spacecraft, changed the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos, its larger companion.
Didymos and Dimorphos are not a threat to Earth any time in the near future, but the kinetic impact technique could be used if scientists found an asteroid on a collision course with our planet. A deflection mission far enough in advance of the threat to Earth could nudge an asteroid into a different orbit, eliminating the hazard to our planet.
Read our preview story for details on the mission.





Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
(News Source :Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Times Of Nation staff and is published from a spaceflightnow.com feed.)
Read Also: Latest News | Current Affairs News | Today News | English News | World News Today
TimesofNation.com offer news and information like: English newspaper today | today English news | English news live | times India | today news in English in India | breaking news in India today | India TV news today & Hindustan News.
You can Read on TimesofNation.com latest news today, breaking news headlines, Top news. Discover national and international news on economy, politics, defence, sports, world news & other relatively current affair’s news.