NASA launches first ever asteroid deflection mission
A spacecraft has been launched from California this morning carrying with it humanity’s greatest hopes of being able to protect our planet from a cataclysmic asteroid impact.
Fortunately the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission is only a test, and if anything goes wrong before it intercepts its target next September, then Earth won’t suffer as a result.
But the stakes are high. Scientists including Stephen Hawking have described impact events as among the greatest threats facing humanity – and even if the DART planetary defence mission proves successful, huge questions about our future readiness will remain.
The DART spacecraft’s collision will be observed by the LICIACube satellite. Pic: NASA
DART launched on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at the Vandenberg Space Force base in California.
Roughly the size of a small car, the spacecraft has been developed by NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to demonstrate for the first time the “kinetic impactor technology” using a direct hit on an asteroid to adjust its speed and path.
A small LICIACube satellite developed by the Italian space agency will travel alongside it to observe the collision which will take place when DART and its target asteroid are within 11 million kilometres of Earth, enabling ground-based telescopes to measure the impact too.
DART is targeting a near-Earth double asteroid known as Didymos and Dimorphos, with the latter being a “moonlet” estimated to be about 160 metres in size – a good test object, but not one that is actually expected to collide with Earth.
It will hit Dimorphos at a speed of roughly 6.6 kilometres per second and, in doing so, shorten its orbit about Didymos – proving that a kinetic impact can change an asteroid’s trajectory.
This nudge technique is preferred to blowing asteroids apart in the style of the film Armageddon, because the fragments from such an explosion could continue to imperil the planet.
A study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US published in 2019 warned that for objects large enough to be targeted it was likely the blasted away fragments would reform under gravity.
The DART spacecraft is just the size of a small car, not including its solar arrays. Pic: NASA
How important is the mission?
The good news is that scientists are completely confident that no asteroids larger than 1km will strike our planet within the next century – the maximum period we can see map out their movements for due to the unpredictability of dynamic systems.
What’s also good is that even among much smaller asteroids, ones larger than just 140 metres, there are no known objects that have a significant chance of striking Earth within the next 100 years too.
The bad news is that only 40% of these asteroids have been found, and the worse news is that asteroids can be much smaller than 140m and still cause significant damage to regions or cities.
Humanity’s ability to detect asteroids before they impact the planet is still in its infancy, in part because of limits set by the laws of physics – our ability to survey asteroids in the dark of space in our solar system depends on them reflecting light towards us, and that depends on direction of their approach relative to the sun and the phase of the moon.
There have been more than 1,200 impacts of asteroids larger than a metre in size since 1998 and of those impacts humanity has only predicted five in advance – 0.42% – and even those predictions came with just hours to spare.
This timeline offers much less wriggle-room than the five years between the DART mission getting approval at NASA and its scheduled rendezvous with Dimorphos next year.
Never mind deflecting an asteroid off-course, hours wouldn’t even offer enough time to evacuate a town.
But astronomers hope and expect that new technologies and monitoring systems will improve our ability to make these predictions in the future – giving us more time – and the DART mission is just the first step in us proving that there is something we can do about it when we know something is coming.
This video grab from YouTube footage shows the meteor streaking across the sky in the Chelyabinsk
What damage can impact events cause?
Impact events are believed to have radically reshaped our planet throughout history, from the formation of the moon through to several enormous extinction events.
The Chicxulub crater is believed to have been caused by a large asteroid approximately 10km in diameter striking the Earth just over 66 million years ago, leading a very sudden mass extinction of an estimated 75% of all animal and plant life on the planet – including the dinosaurs.
A similar scale impact is not expected for the next 100 years at least, but significant damage could be caused by smaller asteroids.
Back in 2013, a meteor exploded in the atmosphere near Chelyabinsk in Russia, causing an enormous fireball, shattering windows, and leading to potentially more than a thousand people to seek medical treatment for their indirect injuries.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft onboard ahead of launch. Pic: NASA/AP
That asteroid is believed to have been roughly 20 metres in size and was completely undetected before it entered the atmosphere, in part because it approached Earth from the direction of the sun – meaning it reflected no light to telescopes on Earth revealing its approach.
When it burned up in the atmosphere and exploded it briefly outshone the sun and the heat from the blast inflicted severe burns on observers below, as well as smashing windows and rattling buildings.
According to Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Chelyabinsk meteor created “an airburst and shockwave that struck six cities across the country - and [sent] a stark reminder that dangerous objects can enter Earth’s atmosphere at any time”.
“Astronomers estimate there are tens of thousands of near-Earth asteroids close to 500ft (150m) wide and larger, big enough to cause regional devastation if they actually hit Earth.
“The Chelyabinsk object was just about 60ft (18m) wide, demonstrating that even small asteroids can be of concern - and making real-world tests of space-based planetary defence systems all the more important,” the university added.
Two people have been killed after a suspect shot at firefighters responding to a fire in the US state of Idaho, authorities have said.
Police were still “taking sniper fire” near the city of Coeur d’Alene on Sunday afternoon, the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office said.
Crews were responding to a fire at Canfield Mountain around 1.30pm and gunshots were reported around half an hour later, the force said.
Pic: Reuters
Sheriff Bob Norris said officials believe the two killed were firefighters, and he did not know if anyone else was shot.
“We don’t know how many suspects are up there, and we don’t know how many casualties there are,” he said. “We are actively taking fire sniper as we speak.”
Mr Norris said the sniper appeared to be hiding in the rugged terrain and using a high-powered rifle, adding he had instructed his deputies to fire back.
“I’m hoping that somebody has a clear shot and is able to neutralise, because they’re not at this point in time showing any evidence of wanting to surrender,” the sheriff said.
Pic: Reuters
Governor Brad Little said “multiple” firefighters were attacked.
“This is a heinous direct assault on our brave firefighters,” he said on X. “I ask all Idahoans to pray for them and their families as we wait to learn more.”
The president of the International Association of Firefighters said a third firefighter was in surgery.
In a statement on social media Edward Kelly said the firefighters “were ambushed in a heinous act of violence”. He added: “Two of our brothers were killed by a sniper, and a third brother remains in surgery.”
The sheriff’s office in neighbouring Shoshone County said authorities were “dealing with an active shooter situation where the shooter is still at large”.
Smoke billows into the air after several firefighters were attacked while responding to a fire. Pic: Reuters
The fire was still raging, Mr Norris said.
“It’s going to keep burning,” he added. “Can’t put any resources on it right now.”
The FBI was sending technical teams and tactical support to the scene, its deputy director Dan Bongino said.
“It remains an active, and very dangerous scene,” he said on X.
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Canfield Mountain is a popular hiking and biking spot on the outskirts of Coeur d’Alene, a city of around 55,000 people in northern Idaho.
Donald Trump has said the US government has found a buyer for TikTok that he will reveal “in about two weeks”.
The president told Fox News “it’s a group of very wealthy people”, adding: “I think I’ll probably need China approval, I think President Xi will probably do it.”
TikTok was ordered last year to find a new owner for its US operation – or face a ban – after politicians said they feared sensitive data about Americans could be passed to the Chinese government.
The video app’s owner, Bytedance, has repeatedly denied such claims.
It originally had a deadline of 19 January to find a buyer – and many users were shocked when it “went dark” for a number of hours when that date came round, before later being restored.
However, President Trump has now extended the deadline several times.
The last extension was on 19 June, when the president signed another executive order pushing it back to 17 September.
Mr Trump’s latest comments suggest multiple people coming together to take control of the app in the US.
Among those rumoured to be potential buyers include YouTube superstar Mr Beast, US search engine startup Perplexity AI, and Kevin O’Leary – an investor from Shark Tank (the US version of Dragons’ Den).
Bytedance said in April that it was still talking to the US government, but there were “differences on many key issues”.
It’s believed the Chinese government will have to approve any agreement.
The president said the identity of the buyer would be disclosed in about two weeks. Pic: Fox News
President Trump’s interview with Fox News also touched on the upcoming end of the pause in US tariffs on imported goods.
On April 9, he granted a 90-day reprieve for countries threatened with a tariff of more than 10% in order to give them time to negotiate.
Deals have already been struck with some countries, including the UK.
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The president said he didn’t think he would need to push back the 9 July deadline and that letters would be sent out imminently stating what tariff each country would face.
“We’ll look at the deficit we have – or whatever it is with the country; we’ll look at how the country treats us – are they good, are they not so good. Some countries, we don’t care – we’ll just send a high number out,” he said.
“But we’re going to be sending letters out starting pretty soon. We don’t have to meet, we have all the numbers.”
The president announced the tariffs in April, arguing they were correcting an unfair trade relationship and would return lost prosperity to US industries such as car-making.
Iran will have the capacity to begin enriching uranium again in “a matter of months”, the UN’s nuclear watchdog boss has said.
Rafael Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that US strikes on three sites a week ago had caused “severe damage” but it was not “total”.
Mr Grossi told CBS News: “The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that.
“But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”
Iran still has “industrial and technological capabilities… so if they so wish, they will be able to start doing this again”, he added.
A satellite overview shows excavators at tunnel entrances at the Fordow site in Iran. Pic: Maxar Technologies/Reuters
Iranian nuclear and military sites were attacked by Israel on 13 June, with the Israelis claiming Tehran was close to developing a nuclear weapon.
The US then carried out its own strikes on 22 June, hitting Iranian nuclear installations at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, under Operation Midnight Hammer.
Iran has insisted its nuclear research is for civilian energy production purposes.
US President Donald Trump said last weekend that the US deployment of 30,000lb “bunker-busting” bombs had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme.
But that claim appeared to be contradicted by an initial assessment from the US Defence Intelligence Agency.
A source said Iran’s enriched uranium stocks had not been eliminated, and the country’s nuclear programme, much of which is buried deep underground, may have been put back only a month or two.
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Did the US destroy Iran’s nuclear sites?
Mr Trump has rejected any suggestion that the damage to the sites was not as profound as he has said.
And he stated he would consider bombing Iran again if Tehran was enriching uranium to worrying levels.
At a news conference on Thursday alongside US defence secretary Pete Hegseth, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Dan Caine, told reporters the GBU-57 bunker buster bombs had been designed in some secrecy with exactly this sort of target in mind.
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US: Iran nuclear sites ‘obliterated’
The head of the CIA has also said a “body of credible intelligence” indicates Iran’s nuclear programme was “severely damaged”.
Director John Ratcliffe revealed that information from a “historically reliable and accurate source” suggests several key sites were destroyed – and will take years to rebuild.
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Meanwhile, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country “slapped America in the face” by launching an attack on 23 June against a major US base in Qatar, adding the nation would never surrender.
The 12-day air conflict between Israel and Iran ended with a US-brokered ceasefire.
But the Iranian armed forces chief of staff, General Abdolrahim Mousavi, has said his country doubts Israel will maintain the truce.
A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said the US strikes had caused significant damage to Tehran’s nuclear facilities.
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