The space agency's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will lift off next month aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
📽️The mission has been likened to the plot of film Armageddon
🚀DART will be testing the possibility of intercepting a near-Earth asteroid by smashing into it at 15,000 miles an hour
➡️In doing so, it will change the speed of the asteroid, known as Didymoon, only a fraction of a percent - but it will be enough for Nasa to measure its altered orbit
☄️Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets whose orbits place them within 30 million miles of Earth
Detecting the threat of near-Earth objects, or NEOs, that could potentially cause grave harm is a primary focus of Nasa and other space organisations around the world
NASA considers any near-Earth object as "potentially hazardous" if it comes within 0.05 astronomical units and measures more than 460 feet in diameter.
According to the US space agency, there are just over 25,000 NEOs - with many more waiting to be discovered
🔎Read our US correspondent @Josiensor's full report here 👇
The former detective described the extreme abuse Uyghurs were subjected to in order to elicit confessions as China rounded up about two million people in a social cleansing programme
The officer, identified only by the surname Jiang, said he worked in one of the hundred internment camps dotted around far-western China
🇨🇳A sudden surge of Chinese warplanes into Taiwan’s air defence zone has raised alarm about whether the drums of war are beating louder across the Taiwan Strait.
🛫A record-breaking 56 Chinese warplanes flew close to the island’s airspace on Monday, following 93 similar flights over the weekend.
The latest mission included 12 nuclear-capable H-6 bombers in the vicinity of the uninhabited Pratas islands claimed by both Taiwan and China
So, what is China up to?
🇹🇼Taiwan acts like any other nation with its own democratic government and military but China’s ruling Communist party claims the island of 24 million as its own territory even though it has never ruled there
Analysts trawled through PCR procurement contracts in Hubei Province, of which Wuhan is the capital, and found spending had almost doubled on the previous year
The study by Internet 2.0 says: "We have come to the conclusion that, based on the data analysed, it suggests the virus was highly likely to be spreading virulently in Wuhan, China, as early as the summer of 2019 and definitely by the autumn"
@Telegraph's unannounced visit to the government building now in the hands of the Taliban was a relaxed affair, @benfarmerDT writes...
🫖"The offer of tea was made with a warm welcome inside, part of a charm offensive by the Islamist leaders who until not too long ago viewed Western journalists with suspicion"
Ethnic Amhara forces have been going "door-to-door" to round up ethnic Tigrayans in the latest harrowing evidence of population cleansing in Ethiopia's blood-drenched civil war.
Witnesses told @Telegraph of forces cutting off limbs and dumping mutilated bodies into mass graves
🔴"They took her to Tekeze river and shot her," said one resident, who knew a victim well.
"Before they killed her, they removed her eyes and cut off her legs. They did not let anyone pick her body up and bury her"