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and in less than an hour this spacex

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rocket will launch the dart spacecraft

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on a six million mile head-on collision

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course

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with a near-earth asteroid

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welcome and thank you for joining us

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here inside the nasa hangar at the

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vandenberg space force base on the

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central coast of california i'm your

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host daryl nail and joining me is kelly

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fast she is a program scientist with the

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planetary defense coordination office

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welcome kelly it's great to have you

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here thank you daryl it's fabulous to be

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here uh helping to cheer dart off the

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planet now right at the top let's talk

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about this are there any asteroids

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threatening earth that we know of

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now thankfully there are no known

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asteroid impact threats to earth you

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keep tracking them we don't know of any

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it's the one that's that we don't know

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about that we're concerned about but

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that's why nasa surveys for an earth

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asteroid searches for them and does a

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test like dart to have that in the

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toolbox okay and this asteroid dart is

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going to hit what's the story there

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well the asteroid didymos does not pose

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an impact threat to earth it keeps its

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distance stays like it gets no closer

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than 3.7 million miles to earth's orbit

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but that's what makes it a fabulous test

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uh situation for dart we can go safely

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test and impact uh the kinetic impact

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technique uh and ditamos is the perfect

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laboratory for that okay and this

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spacecraft is is this something that

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could one day save the planet well

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what's nice about this i mean it's a

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nice mature technique kinetic impact you

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just impact something but now we're

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actually going to test it so this is

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going to be really good to have

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something in the toolbox that we've

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actually tried taking it from modeling

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to an actual test well it is certainly

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exciting just to hear you talk about it

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and when that moment happens in the fall

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of 2022 when that impact happens that's