On Tuesday, October 11, at 2 p.m. EDT, NASA will hold a press conference to explain the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and its planned collision with the asteroid Dimorphos.

The briefing will be broadcast on the NASA website, NASA TV, and NASA app.

Leaders from NASA, the Italian Space Agency, and the DART mission team are among the attendees.

Media must RSVP to Josh Handal at joshua.a.handal@nasa.gov no later than two hours prior to the briefing’s commencement in order to attend in person or participate remotely and ask questions. The policy for NASA’s media accreditation is available online.

The Webb Auditorium of the NASA Headquarters Mary W. Jackson building, located at 300 E. Street, SW in Washington, will host the media briefing.

DART successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, September 26, in the first test of planetary defence technology ever. DART’s collision with the asteroid Dimorphos will aid in determining whether asteroid deflection using a kinetic impactor spacecraft is a practical mitigation strategy for defending the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered. This is part of NASA’s overall planetary defence strategy. As a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office, the DART mission is managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Both Dimorphos, the target asteroid of DART, and Didymos, its parent and larger asteroid, are not dangerous to Earth.

Source: Prnewswire