Explanation: NASA’s DART mission:

• In the first-of-its-kind, save-the-world experiment, NASA is about to hit hard a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles away. A spacecraft named Dart will zero in on the asteroid, intent on slamming it head-on at 14,000 mph (22,500 kph).
• It is NASA’s first planetary defence test mission named the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).
• The mission is to test the new technology to be prepared in case an asteroid heads towards Earth in the future.
• The aim is to test the newly developed technology that would allow a spacecraft to crash into an asteroid and change its course.
• After the mission has collided with the asteroid, scientists will study its impact on the trajectory of the asteroid with a range of telescopes deployed on different regions of the planet.
• DART is the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space.
• DART is a low-cost spacecraft.
• It has two solar arrays and uses hydrazine propellant for manoeuvring the spacecraft.
• It also carries about 10 kg of xenon which will be used to demonstrate the agency’s new thrusters called NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster–Commercial (NEXT-C) in space.
• NEXT-C gridded ion thruster system provides a combination of performance and spacecraft integration capabilities that make it uniquely suited for deep space robotic missions.
• The spacecraft carries a high-resolution imager called Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation (DRACO).
• Images from DRACO will be sent to Earth in real time and will help study the impact site and surface of Dimorphos (the target asteroid).

Source: The Hindu