NASA will attempt to steer an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into it.

NASA will intentionally crash the Dart robot spacecraft with an asteroid in a scheme right out of a science fiction movie to see if the impact may alter the asteroid’s trajectory.

The asteroid Dimorphos is the intended target of this test, and the spacecraft will collide with it while travelling at a speed of four miles per second.

A number of hypotheses that involved utilising an object to alter an asteroid’s course have been advanced in the past.

The scientists hope to learn more about the precise impact’s effects from this experiment, as well as how space debris will respond in a similar scenario.

According to an article in The Guardian, Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast, ‘We know asteroids have hit us in the past.’ ‘These effects are a result of a natural process, and they will manifest themselves in the future. The worst of them should be stopped.’

‘We’ve never tested the technology that will be required to do it, and that is the issue,’ Fitzsimmons, a participant of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, stated that this was the mission’s goal.