The United States launched a space probe to collide with an asteroid

Photo: Bill Ingalls/NASA, via Associated Press

The American space agency NASA has launched a spacecraft for the first time to deliberately collide with an asteroid in order to change its orbit. The DART space probe was launched from a Falcon 9 launch vehicle from the Vandenberg Cosmodrome in California on Wednesday night, March 24, NASA reported on its Twitter microblog.

The planned collision with the asteroid Dimorfos should occur in October 2022. NASA expects the $ 330 million DART mission to provide new data on how to protect Earth from asteroids.