NASA spacecraft will slam into asteroid in first planetary-defence test

Good news! If this important experiment is successful, generations of humans can sleep better.

Yes, if an asteroid were to hit earth that would be a real climate crisis, not a manufactured one that our political leaders cared about in Glasgow at COP26.

" ... [after] DART [launched] successfully [November 23, 2021], in late September or early October of next year it will slam headlong into Dimorphos at 6.6 kilometres per second. The impact should shrink Dimorphos’s orbit so that it circles Didymos at least 73 seconds faster than before. (Dimorphos is named after the Greek for ‘having two forms’, to signal NASA's intent to change the asteroid’s orbit.) Astronomers using telescopes on Earth will watch Didymos for signs of that orbital change — which would be evident in the way its brightness changes over time, as Dimorphos passes in front of and behind it. ...
NASA has identified more than 27,000 asteroids with trajectories that bring them close to Earth. The worry is that some new asteroid could appear, headed directly towards the planet — and that it would be large enough to cause serious consequences when it hits, just as with the asteroid that helped to kill off the dinosaurs and other life on Earth 66 million years ago. ..."

NASA spacecraft will slam into asteroid in first planetary-defence test DART mission to try out a strategy for shielding Earth from killer asteroids.