NASA designing 1st-ever mission to hit and deflect asteroids
The first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defence, Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), has moved to design phase, NASA recently announced. DART's first target is a 160-metre-wide asteroid that will have a distant approach to Earth in 2022. DART would strike the asteroid at 6 km/sec, nine times faster than a bullet, to deflect it away.