How to watch NASA launch its DART anti-asteroid spacecraft tonight

By Georgina Torbet November 23, 2021

NASA is about to launch a spacecraft with a daring mission: To crash into an asteroid, in order to test our planetary defense options. The mission, dubbed DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), will head toward a pair of asteroids called Didymos and Dimorphos and will crash into the smaller one in an attempt to knock it off-course. Don’t worry — the asteroid pair doesn’t actually threaten Earth — but this test will demonstrate what defense options Earth might have if an incoming body threatened our planet.

NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV

The launch of DART is scheduled for 1:20 a.m. ET on Wednesday, November 24 (10:20 p.m. PT on Tuesday, November 23) and will be livestreamed by NASA. We’ve got all the details on how to watch the launch as it happens.

Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos binary system. — Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos binary system. NASA/Johns Hopkins, APL/Steve Gribben

DART will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It will travel through space until arriving at the double asteroid system in fall 2022 and beginning its collision test.

How to watch the DART launch

To watch the launch live, you can tune into the NASA TV channel either by using the video embedded at the top of this page or by heading to NASA’s website.

Coverage of the launch begins at 12:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, November 24 (9:30 p.m. PT on Tuesday, November 23), showing prelaunch activities as well as the launch itself.

If you’d like to learn more about the DART mission, there are also two news conferences coming up this week: One today, Sunday, November 11, and one on Monday. On Sunday at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT) there is a DART investigation and engineering briefing, while on Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT) there is a DART prelaunch news conference.

Finally, there is also a NASA Science Live event all about the DART mission featuring Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate’s Planetary Science Division, Nancy Chabot, DART coordination lead, and Joshua Ramirez Rodriguez, telecommunications subsystem integration and test lead engineer. This event will be shown on NASA on Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. ET) and will include the opportunity for members of the public to submit questions during the stream.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…

Space

How to watch homecoming SpaceX astronauts fly overhead on Tuesday

SpaceX's Crew-6 reentering Earth's atmosphere.

SpaceX’s Crew-7 astronauts undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) at 11:20 a.m. ET on Monday after a six-and-a-half-month stay aboard the orbital outpost.

NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov are expected to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico at around 5:50 a.m. ET on Tuesday morning. If the skies are clear, folks in more than a dozen states will be able to witness the crew’s homecoming as the capsule flies overhead.

Space

How to watch SpaceX Crew-7 return to Earth this week

SpaceX Crew-7 aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft at the start of their mission in August 2023.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 Re-entry and Splashdown

SpaceX’s Crew-7 is preparing to depart the International Space Station (ISS) after a six-and-a-half-month stay aboard the orbital outpost some 250 miles above Earth. NASA will live-stream all of the key moments of the homecoming (full details below).

Space

Meet NASA’s trio of mini moon rovers set to launch next year

Part of NASA’s CADRE technology demonstration, three small rovers that will explore the Moon together show off their ability to drive as a team autonomously – without explicit commands from engineers – during a test in a clean room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in December 2023.

NASA is ramping up its plans for exploring the moon, not only in terms of preparing to send astronauts there but also rovers. There's the VIPER rover, which will search for water around the lunar south pole, and now NASA is introducing a trio of mini rovers called CADRE, or Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration. These will work together as a team to map the lunar surface, testing the possibilities of using rovers in groups for future exploration.

The rovers, developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, are just the size of a carry-on suitcase. They are designed to move independently but share data so they can cover more ground than a single rover could. They'll have to work over a lunar day, which is about two weeks, to map out features on the surface and look below ground using radar.