Skip your plans this evening — tonight’s blockbuster event comes straight from outer space to your living room.
NASA presents a live stream starting at 6 pm EDT of a spacecraft crashing into an asteroid.
Yes, you read that correctly.
NASA wants to test its ability to protect Earth from asteroids that could, you know, destroy all life. To that end, it’s sending the DART spacecraft to slam into Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting a near-Earth asteroid named Didymos.
“All the action” of DART (or Double Asteroid Redirect Mission) will stream through several platforms including Space.com, NASA TV, and social media channels, the space agency said Monday.
NASA hopes that DART’s impact on Dimorphos will alter the path of its orbit. Throughout Monday, DART will send images through the live stream until it destroys itself by crashing into the small moon.
The test poses no threat to Earth, and NASA hopes to see a measurable change in Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos. It will likely take months or years to fully understand how today’s events will alter its orbit. However, agency officials will offer observations on the experiment immediately after the crash, at around 8 pm EDT.
In addition to live coverage from Space.com, NASA has arranged for another video stream sharing real-time images from the spacecraft’s DRACO camera.
Intended impact time is 7:14 pm EDT.
The public also can watch the mission live on agency social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Want to learn more about the DART project ahead of time? Check out this nifty photo explainer from NASA.
