NASA is about to slam a spaceship into an asteroidabout the sizeof the Great Pyramid of Giza in an attack to alter its class . The project , part of NASA ’s Planetary Defense remit , aims to test whether the method could be used in the result of an asteroid on a hit course with Earth .

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test ( DART ) isexpected to impact asteroid Dimorphosat 7:14 pm EDT on Monday , September 26 , as the object makes its closest glide path to Earth . Unlike in most major asteroid movies , the vending machine - sized spacecraft , whichlaunched in November 2021 , will autonomously navigate its way to impact , and be entirely Bruce Willis - free .

In lodge to mensurate the shock of the $ 330 million spacecraft , scientists at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory will look tight at how long it takes for moonlet Dimorphos to revolve its parent asteroid Didymos , before and after shock . If the 24,100 - kilometers - per - hour ( 15,000 miles per hour ) collision has been successful , the asteroid willcomplete its orbit in a shorter time period . The Lowell Discovery Telescope in Flagstaff , Arizona has been keeping a close watch on the orbital path of Dimorphos for this very intellect .

“ The before - and - after nature of this experiment ask keen cognition of the asteroid organization before we do anything to it , ” astronomer at Lowell Observatory Nick Moskovitztold NASA . “ We do n’t desire to , at the last minute , say , ‘ Oh , here ’s something we had n’t think about or phenomena we had n’t consider . ’ We require to be sure that any change we see is entirely due to what DART did . ”

The team needs to be indisputable that the orbit has been altered by the impact itself , and not other factor such as the Sun heat up one side of the asteroid , which can alter the flight of the physical object to such an extent that it ’s been hint we couldspray - paint an asteroidthat was heading our way .

NASA hop that DART will help it gauge the effectiveness of slamming spacecraft into potentially - hazardous asteroids , and allow them to " assess how dear toapply it to succeeding planetary defense scenarios " .

If the trial is successful , and a satellite - killer asteroid ( or small-scale ) is found to be head towards Earth , there ’s a chance that one day we could end up Bruce Willis - ing it out of our manner .