Thread by @MailOnline

NASA launches its first ever 'Armageddon' mission to deflect asteroid

+ Spacecraft Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to deliberately crash into asteroid Dimorphos at 15,000 mph

READ MORE: trib.al/Bh7AmZj

The $325m 'Armageddon' mission will take 10 months to complete its seven million-mile journey into deep space

+ DART, a box-shaped space probe, will then smash into asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits larger asteroid Didymos in September 2022

READ MORE: trib.al/Bh7AmZj

The target asteroid, Dimorphos, which means 'two forms' in Greek, is about 525ft in diameter and orbits around Didymos ('twin' in Greek)

+ Dimorphos and Didymos are depicted here to scale with some of Earth's most famous landmarks

READ MORE: trib.al/Bh7AmZj

The pair are no danger to Earth but offer a way to test our 'planetary defense'

+ The DART craft is set on a course of collision that will slow Dimorphos down
+ It could one day alter the course of an asteroid before it bears down on Earth

READ MORE: trib.al/Bh7AmZj

NASA's 'planetary defense' mission echoes the plot of Bruce Willis movie 'Armageddon'

READ MORE: trib.al/Bh7AmZj

NASA considers any near-Earth object 'potentially hazardous' if it comes within 0.05 astronomical units (4.6 million miles) and measures more than 460ft in diameter

+ More than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids have been catalogued

READ MORE: trib.al/Bh7AmZj

An asteroid discovered in 1999 called Bennu will pass within half the distance of the Earth to the Moon in the year 2135

+ According to recent experiments, deflecting an asteroid such as Bennu could require multiple small 'bumps'

READ MORE: trib.al/Bh7AmZj

What would you do if an asteroid was about to hit Earth? 🌎