DART Mission Demonstrates NASA’s Planetary Defense Strategy

The DART mission successfully struck an asteroid 11 million kilometres away with a spacecraft. Find out why this achievement demonstrates how humanity could one day protect and preserve life on Earth.

I had the great privilege of taking a course with Professor Emeritus Henry Halls when I was in university. Professor Halls is an eminent geologist.

He’s the person from whom I first learned about the Tunguska incident. In 1908, an asteroid of about 50 metres in diameter entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded into pieces over Tunguska, Siberia.

It flattened over 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 square kilometres, killing at least three people in that isolated and unpopulated region. It was the largest impact event in recorded history, although prehistoric collisions have been much more destructive.

Possibility of Impacts Have Concerned Astronomers

The possibility of future impacts like these have concerned astronomers ever since they discovered asteroids. Although observations show no sign of an imminent impact like the one that killed the dinosaurs, scientists realized that…