The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft will be launched in June 2021 by a Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg base in California (USA), NASA reports.
During the mission, the space agency plans to test the possibility of using kinetic impact to change the trajectory of the asteroid (65803) Didyme. To do this, DART will collide with a small satellite (moon) of the asteroid when the system is about 11 million kilometers from Earth.
DART has a budget of $ 69 million including launch costs.
In April 2016, astrophysicists from the United States proposed to use laser radiation to combat potentially hazardous objects (POOs), in particular asteroids in near-earth orbit.
Near-Earth Didyma, which is part of the Apollo group, has an elongated orbit (152 million kilometers by 340 million), and reaches 0.8 kilometers in diameter. At a distance of about 1.1 kilometers from the asteroid, its satellite is located, the diameter of which is estimated at 150 meters, and the period of rotation (around Didim) is 11.9 hours.