Nasa will attempt to re-direct an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into its moon on Tuesday.
NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is the first to deliberately and measurably change the motion of a significant body in the Solar System.
The mission is to see how difficult it would be to stop a large space rock from hitting Earth.
DART was launched on November 24, 2021, with its destination two asteroids in orbit around each other, 11 million kilometres from Earth.
The impact is expected to happen at about12:14pm on Tuesday (NZ time).
Planetary astronomer Michele Bannister told AM on Tuesday it's entirely possible to push the asteroid off course by targetting its smaller moon.
"The thing about asteroids is it's a natural hazard that we can prevent," Bannister told co-host Ryan Bridge.
"It's something we can't do with the kinds of things like volcanoes or tsunamis or earthquakes. But for this one, if we can find the asteroids first and then we can put these new technologies in place that would let us safely just deflect it a little bit well, ahead of time, it's the kind of thing where we can remove this hazard altogether."
Crashing into an asteroid will provide "no hazard" to earth, Bannister said.
Watch the full interview above.
