“…and it’s not nearly an interesting a character as Rockhound…”
DART – the Double Asteroid Impactor Test – is designed to impact an asteroid with a “refrigerator” sized “bullet”.
The intention is to see if a slight nudge to an asteroid can – given enough time (meaning, impacting the asteroid early enough in its orbit) – nudge it out of an Earth – intersecting orbit.
It’s part of a planetary defense system that’s really just beginning to be taken seriously (even though we’ve needed one for at least 60 million years at this point).
If you are sufficiently interested, you can watch a vide of DART’s launch here, from back in November 2021. The mission has been traveling since then.
SpaceX has some coverage also
DART is expected to impact on September 26th at approximately 7:18 pm. It will take approximately 38 seconds for results to be known.
You can watch coverage here
