The extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, including the non-avian dinosaurs, around 66 million years ago was probably caused by the impact of a huge asteroid approximately 10–15 km wide (Figure 1). While such events are thankfully very rare, the impact of a much smaller asteroid still has the potential to cause devastation on a significant scale (Figure 2).
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was the first attempt to deflect an asteroid through ‘kinetic impact’. The main part of the spacecraft (Figure 3) was a cube roughly 1.2 m × 1.3 m × 1.3 m, together with two solar arrays, giving a total mass of about 580 kg on impact.
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