NASA’s DART spacecraft expected to collide with an asteroid. Here’s what to know and how to watch

(NEW YORK) — An asteroid hurtles toward Earth, threatening to end all human life. It’s a plot Hollywood has obsessed over for years. NASA wants to make sure it never actually happens.

On Monday, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, will collide with an asteroid at high speed in a test of that exact scenario. If all goes to plan, the collision will redirect the space rock and alter its flight path.

The asteroid, in this case, does not pose a threat to the planet. But the mission will help scientists test technologies that could prevent a potentially catastrophic asteroid impact.

Here’s what you need to know about the mission and how to watch it:

The aircraft will not destroy Dimorphos but it is expected to redirect the space rock onto a different flight path.

“The idea is that asteroid impacts occur when an asteroid’s orbit and the Earth’s orbit intersect,” Andy Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (Johns Hopkins APL), which is building the spacecraft and managing the mission for NASA, told ABC News last November. “So the idea of kinetic impactor is to give the asteroid a bit of a push so it doesn’t show up at the same time, at the same place as Earth.”

“This is the only natural disaster that humankind can do something about,” Rivkin said of asteroid impacts. “And this is our first attempt to kind of take that into our hands, to take our future into our hands that way.”

When will the collision take place, and how can you watch it?

The collision will take place at 7:14 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday. Viewers can watch the video feed live on NASA TV, though it will be operating with a 45-second delay.

Coverage of the mission will begin on NASA TV at 6 p.m. ET.

NASA will also stream photos from the spacecraft as it nears impact with the asteroid. Those images can be viewed on NASA’s media channel.

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