The thinking is you would only need to change the rock's velocity by a small amount to alter its path so that it misses Earth - provided you do it far enough in advance. Its idea is simply to smash a spacecraft into one. But how do you protect Earth from a killer asteroid for real? We've all seen how Hollywood would do it, with brave astronauts and nuclear weapons. Telescopes will be watching from afar, including the new super space observatory James Webb. The impact is timed for 23:14 GMT, Monday (12:14pm NZ time, Tuesday). The agency says the rock is not currently on a path to hit Earth, nor will the test accidentally send it in our direction. The demonstration is taking place some 11 million km away on a target called Dimorphos. Nasa's Dart mission wants to see how difficult it would be to stop a sizeable space rock from hitting Earth. In the coming hours, the American space agency will crash a probe into an asteroid. This artist's illustration shows the DART spacecraft from behind prior to impact at the Didymos binary system.
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