Nasa prepares to launch spacecraft that will crash into asteroid and change its orbit in first ‘planetary defence’ test

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Nasa is preparing to launch its first-ever “planetary defence” mission to crash a spacecraft onto an asteroid to slightly change its course. Engineers and scientists part of the American space agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test team have filled the spacecraft with fuel, performed many of the final tests, and are running rehearsals as they approach the scheduled launch on 23 November, Nasa said on Thursday. “Dart will be the first demonstration of the ‘kinetic impactor’ technique in which a spacecraft deliberately collides with a known asteroid at high speed to change the asteroid’s motion in space,” Lindley Johnson, Nasa’s planetary defence officer, said in a statement. “Though Dart ramming into Dimorphos means the end of the spacecraft, it’s just the start of the science,” Andy Rivkin, Dart investigation team lead at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, had said in January.