Nasa prepares to smash spacecraft into an asteroid in 'earth-saving' mission

Nasa are getting ready to smash a spacecraft into a harmless asteroid, to measure how they could deter one that’s actually headed for Earth.

The $330-million mission is set to take place 11 million kilometres from Earth on 26 September at 7:14pm ET.

“We describe it as running a golf cart into the Great Pyramid,” says Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

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