Will there be an asteroid in 2021?

You might have heard the buzz about an asteroid called 4660 Nereus, coming closest to Earth on Saturday, December 11, 2021. Close is a relative term. The 1,083-foot (330-meter) asteroid will come within 2.4 million miles (3.9 million km) of Earth, still about 10 times farther away than the moon.

At 1:21 a.m. EST on November 24, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. In the ensuing few hours, the spacecraft established communication with mission operators and successfully unfurled its solar arrays .

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) DART is the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact . Goals. Demonstrate asteroid deflection with a kinetic impactor. Launch.