NASA To Nudge Asteroid In Test

Above, scenes from "Panic In The Sky" the most popular episode of Adventures of Superman.

"That's a meteor, king-sized!" - Perry White (John Hamilton) in "Panic In The Sky", Adventures of Superman (1953).

Well, Earth isn't exactly threatened by any specific asteroid, but NASA isn't taking any chances and is testing a defense against asteroids that could hit our planet. 

From CBS News:

NASA's upcoming mission might resemble a scene from a sci-fi disaster movie. The agency announced Sunday that it's sending spacecraft above the Earth to crash into an asteroid's moonlet to change the body's trajectory. 

The mission, a Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), will be the first agency's use of the kinetic impactor technique, in which a large, high-speed spacecraft is sent into an asteroid's path to change its motion. NASA is set to conduct the mission, what it calls "the first test for planetary defense," on November 24, the day before Thanksgiving, to hit the binary near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its moonlet, Dimorphos.

Hopefully, the mission won't screw up and send the moonlet hurtling right into Washington, D. C. But then, on second thought, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Just kidding!

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