DART: The Impacts Of Slamming A Spacecraft Into An Asteroid

If an asteroid were hurling through space, making a beeline straight to Earth, how would humans prevent it from doing what it did to the dinosaurs? Would we bomb it? Would we shoot lasers at it like a scene from Hollywood's latest sci-fi flick? Well, the folks at NASA have designed and tested a theory.

"The DART mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is essentially our first test of a kinetic impact for planetary defense." says Cristina Thomas, assistant professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science at Northern Arizona University.

Put simply, scientists at NASA took a spacecraft and crashed it into an asteroid — hoping the little nudge, like bumper cars, would be enough to push the asteroid off course.

Today on the show, Short Wave's scientist-in-residence Regina G. Barber talks to Cristina Thomas about what it was like watching the success of the DART mission and what this means for science and planetary defense.

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