The mission of NASA's DART spacecraft is to demonstrate the world's first planetary defence system, which is designed to smash directly into an asteroid and deflect it away from causing a collision with Earth

The US-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s spacecraft that is aimed at crashing to succeed its mission was launched today from California.

The mission of NASA's 'Double Asteroid Redirection Test' (DART) spacecraft is to demonstrate the world's first planetary defence system, which is designed to smash directly into an asteroid and deflect it away from causing a potential Armageddon-style doomsday collision with Earth.

NASA, in a statement, said, "DART is a planetary defence-driven test of technologies for preventing an impact of Earth by a hazardous asteroid. DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space."

NASA's top scientist Thomas Zuburchen, while speaking about the $330 million (Rs 2,460 crore) project, said, "What we're trying to learn is how to deflect a threat."

The DART spacecraft was launched into the night sky at 10:21 pm Pacific time (11:51 am IST Wednesday) from the Vandenberg US Space Force Base aboard a SpaceX-owned Falcon 9 rocket.

The goal of NASA's DART spacecraft is to slightly alter the trajectory of Dimorphos, a "moonlet" around 525 feet (160 metres, or two Statues of Liberty) wide that circles a much larger binary asteroid system named 65803 Didymos (2,500 feet in diameter).

These asteroids do not pose any threat to Earth but are the perfect test candidates for the DART mission. The pair orbit the Sun together and belong to a class of bodies known as Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), which approach within 30 million miles.

However, DART is not expected to rendezvous with Didymos until late September 2022.

NASA's Planetary Defence Coordination Office is most interested in asteroids larger than 460 feet, which have the potential to level entire cities or regions with many times the energy of average nuclear bombs.

There are around 10,000 known asteroids that are 460 feet or greater in size near Earth, but none has a significant chance to hit in the next 100 years. However, scientists think there are still 15,000 more such objects waiting to be discovered.

Scientists also believe that 460-foot asteroids strike once every 20,000 years. Asteroids that are six miles or wider — such as the one that collided 66 million years ago and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs — occur around every 100-200 million years.