NASA's DART is Earth's first planetary defence move
Image Credit: national geographic
A NASA spacecraft was set to smash into an asteroid early on Tuesday, in a bid to test a technology to defend Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards in the future. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a first such mission, was set to impact its target asteroid -- which poses no threat to Earth -- at 7.14 p.m. on Monday (4.44 a.m. on Tuesday IST).