ASTEROID WARNING: NASA preparing space weapon which will protect Earth from DOOMSDAY

The US space agency is constantly on the look out for ways in which it can protect Earth from an asteroid strike, and believes it has the solution. NASA has already begun its design phase on a spacecraft known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) which will be used to redirect an asteroids path, when the massive space rock inevitably heads towards our planet. Tests in outer space could begin as early as 2020 where it will attempt to move a “non-threatening” asteroid.

NASA said on its website: “DART is a planetary defence-driven test of one of the technologies for preventing the Earth impact of a hazardous asteroid: the kinetic impactor.

“DART’s primary objective is to demonstrate a kinetic impact on a small asteroid.

“The binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos is the target for DART.”

The tester mission which actually see DART travel to an asteroid system made-up of two small space rocks known as Didymos A and B when they fly close to Earth between 2022 and 2024.

DART will then hit the smaller asteroid, which is about 160 metres in length, “nine times faster than a bullet, approximately 3.7 miles per second” according to a statement.

Lindley Johnson, planetary defence officer at Nasa Headquarters in Washington, said: “DART would be NASA’s first mission to demonstrate what’s known as the kinetic impactor technique – striking the asteroid to shift its orbit – to defend against a potential future asteroid impact.

“This approval step advances the project toward an historic test with a non-threatening small asteroid.”

Andy Cheng of The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, the DART investigation co-lead, said: “DART is a critical step in demonstrating we can protect our planet from a future asteroid impact.

“Since we don’t know that much about their internal structure or composition, we need to perform this experiment on a real asteroid.

“With DART, we can show how to protect Earth from an asteroid strike with a kinetic impactor by knocking the hazardous object into a different flight path that would not threaten the planet.”