An experiment by the US space agency, scheduled for the early hours of Monday, aims to assess whether it is possible to divert an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

A NASA spacecraft will hit an asteroid at dawn on Monday.

DART, an acronym for “Double Asteroid Redirection Test,” will have a confrontation with the space rock after its launch 10 months ago. the ship You will hit the moon From an asteroid to see how it affects the movement of this space object.

The mission is headed to Demorphos, a small moon orbiting the asteroid Didymos. NASA said the asteroid system poses no threat to Earth, making it an ideal target for a kinetic impact test — which may be necessary if, one day, an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth.

This event will be the first large-scale demonstration of a diversion technology that can protect the planet. The effect is expected at 00:14 on Monday.

At that time, Demorphos will be relatively close to Earth – within a radius of 11 million km. The spacecraft will accelerate to about 24,140 kilometers per hour when it hits the asteroid.

“For the first time, we will measurably change the orbit of a celestial body in the universe,” said Robert Brown, head of space exploration at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.