© News Bangla
You know what? We're going to spare you the "Armageddon" reference that we had planned and just jump straight to the lede on this one.
NASA has teamed up with the European Space Agency (ESA) to in what many are calling
the first planetary defense test: an attempt to alter the orbit of an asteroid. The
much-beleaguered Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which we first
reported on in 2015, involves a visit to a double asteroid system consisting of the relatively tiny asteroid Didymos and its even tinier moon, informally called "Didymoon." Rather than bringing a nice bottle of wine and an asteroid rover, however, DART will be attempting to crash an impactor spacecraft into Didymoon to knock the asteroid out of orbit, assuming, of course, that Elon Musk's Tesla doesn't get there first.
Once the space rocks are sent hurtling out of control to become some other planet's problem, ESA's part of the project, dubbed
Hera, will follow-up with a visit to the Didymoon to survey the effects of the DART spacecraft's impact and assess the feasibility and efficacy of redirection.
Comment: In December 2018 a meteor fireball lit up San Francisco Bay Area leaving a glowing 'dragon' trail.