The DART spacecraft is looking to slam head on into Dimorphos, an asteroid, at 15,000 miles per hour, next September; a project at the crossroads of science fiction and reality.
Thomas Zurbuchen, an associate administrator for science, says NASA wants to defend planet Earth against potential future asteroid impacts.
Scientists constantly search for asteroids and plot their courses to determine whether they could hit the planet.
The DART technique could prove useful for altering the course of an asteroid years or decades before it bears down on Earth with the potential for catastrophe.
Zurbuchen says there's no threat to Earth from asteroids, but NASA just like to be prepared.
There's a reason why the space agency are so interested in the asteroid Dimorphos.
It orbits a much larger asteroid called Didymos.
The pair are no danger to Earth, but they offer scientists a better way to measure the effectiveness of a collision than a single asteroid flying through space.
Dimorphos completes one orbit of Didymos every 11 hours, 55 minutes.
DART's goal is a crash that will slow Dimorphos down and cause it to fall closer toward the bigger asteroid, shaving 10 minutes off its orbit.
DART project manager Ed Reynolds says they're confident the mission will be a success.
The project is taking place on a scale that's hard to imagine.
DART will take 10 months to reach the asteroid pair.
The collision between the craft and the asteroid will take place about 6.8 million miles from Earth.
