Humanity’s first attempt to alter the motion of an asteroid or any celestial body.
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A bit worrying imo.
Shouldnt mess with nature.
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@Cinderella , About as useful as a rubber spoon IMO?
A feather versus an elephant ?
No need to do this demonstration at all !
It’s all been done on paper before ! 
Are they preparing for an ELE?
I’d imagine that the effect on the trajectory would be miniscule. This would only be useful if it took place at a huge distance from Earth, which would make it nigh on possible to carry out given the time it’d take to get something out there in time. Plus, of course, unless one has an excellent model of other bodies and how these may be adversely and accidentally affected, it’d be a potentially pointless task, and possibly even lead to a far greater catastrophe.
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They might have thought of those scenario, but not have any data.
An experiment to see if Armageddon could be averted.
When playing with the motion of heavenly bodies, it pays to exercise some caution. The Dart mission has been planned so that it does not inadvertently knock Dimorphos on to a collision course with Earth. The 160 metre-wide rock orbits a second, larger asteroid called Didymos. When Dart collides, the impact will do nothing more than raise a cloud of debris and slow Dimorphos down, adding a few minutes to its orbit around the larger body.
“There’s no danger in this whatsoever,” said Prof Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer and member of the Dart mission science team at Edinburgh University. “We are only changing its orbit around the bigger asteroid, we’re not changing its orbit around the sun. It cannot come towards Earth.”
“The primary mission is a test of planetary defence, but at the same time, we can learn a lot about the asteroid,” said Snodgrass.
In the aftermath of the collision, scientists will work out how much Dimorphos has been slowed down by the impact. To do this, they will monitor the brightness of the larger asteroid, Didymos, which dims slightly every time Dimorphos crosses in front to complete a lap. Dimorphos currently takes about 12 hours to orbit Didymos, and it is expected to take a few minutes longer once Dart has struck.
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Any chance of them practising a bit closer to home? Perhaps on a house or two on a little road off Whitehall?
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I think it is science at its best. The information garnered from this experiment will enable accurate calculations to be made as to exactly what would be needed to move an asteroid off course in the event that Bruce Willis is unavailable.
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@Cinderella , And assuming that all trajectories were settled long ago !!
Not likely given that " events " are still occuring ??
In fact the universe is composed of events !! 
Again, they must have worked that out, for this mission to be successful.
Ask NASA. 
They have the capability to maybe save the planet, whether they should try an intriguing thought.
https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/media-contacts-and-information
https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart/dart-news
well stop contradicting Donkeyman and perhaps he will ask NASA!!
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Anyone can leave a question on the website.
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I think the point here is that it’s all well and good on paper but is it actually feasible in reality
Which sadly he now is.
Assuming that what happened was what they intended to happen, rather than the prediction being written after the event 
Initial calculations suggest that DART finished its 11-million-kilometre journey from Earth just 17 metres off its intended target spot on the asteroid’s surface. It will take weeks or months to find out whether this was enough to change the duration of Dimorphos’s orbit by at least 73 seconds, the minimum number for the mission to be deemed a success. DART’s engineers hope to achieve a change in orbit closer to 10 minutes.
Lessons learned from the impact might one day help us divert dangerous asteroids from hitting Earth.
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