Follow NBC News’ Tom Costello as he covers NASA's Dart spacecraft travelling at 14,000 miles per hour (ca. 22,531 km/h) before crashing into an asteroid.
Dimorphos, a relatively innocuous space rock orbiting a much larger distant asteroid, 7 million miles from earth, was home to NASA's first test as they investigated whether they could alter the path of a celestial body.
NASA may one day use the same technique to divert a 'mega-asteroid' heading for Earth, a real-life threat to the global population.
In 2016, a massive meteor escaped detection and exploded over a remote Russian village.