What happens if an asteroid heads towards Earth? NASA has a plan, and it involves a crash

Jordan Mendoza, USA TODAY
November 4, 2021·4 min read

There won't be any Bruce Willis or Aerosmith, but NASA is getting ready to do something similar to the hit 1998 sci-fi thriller "Armageddon:" crash into an asteroid.

Aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which will leave the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California no earlier than 10 p.m. local time on Nov. 23, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, will depart into space in hopes of determining "if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course."

"It's such an exciting mission," Andy Cheng, lead investigator of DART, told reporters on Thursday. "It's unbelievable."

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