Skip to main content

How to watch NASA launch its DART anti-asteroid spacecraft tonight

NASA is about to launch a spacecraft with a daring mission: To crash into an asteroid, in order to test our planetary defense options. The mission, dubbed DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), will head toward a pair of asteroids called Didymos and Dimorphos and will crash into the smaller one in an attempt to knock it off-course. Don’t worry — the asteroid pair doesn’t actually threaten Earth — but this test will demonstrate what defense options Earth might have if an incoming body threatened our planet.

NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV

The launch of DART is scheduled for 1:20 a.m. ET on Wednesday, November 24 (10:20 p.m. PT on Tuesday, November 23) and will be livestreamed by NASA. We’ve got all the details on how to watch the launch as it happens.

Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos binary system.
Illustration of NASA’s DART spacecraft and the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) LICIACube prior to impact at the Didymos binary system. NASA/Johns Hopkins, APL/Steve Gribben

DART will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It will travel through space until arriving at the double asteroid system in fall 2022 and beginning its collision test.

Recommended Videos

How to watch the DART launch

To watch the launch live, you can tune into the NASA TV channel either by using the video embedded at the top of this page or by heading to NASA’s website.

Coverage of the launch begins at 12:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, November 24 (9:30 p.m. PT on Tuesday, November 23), showing prelaunch activities as well as the launch itself.

If you’d like to learn more about the DART mission, there are also two news conferences coming up this week: One today, Sunday, November 11, and one on Monday. On Sunday at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. PT) there is a DART investigation and engineering briefing, while on Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT) there is a DART prelaunch news conference.

Finally, there is also a NASA Science Live event all about the DART mission featuring Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate’s Planetary Science Division, Nancy Chabot, DART coordination lead, and Joshua Ramirez Rodriguez, telecommunications subsystem integration and test lead engineer. This event will be shown on NASA on Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET (1 p.m. ET) and will include the opportunity for members of the public to submit questions during the stream.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Watch Sierra Space destroy its inflatable space station — again
Sierra Space's LIFE facility as it explodes in a pressure test.

Witnessing an explosion involving a carefully constructed piece of space kit doesn’t seem like a good thing, but engineers at Sierra Space was entirely happy to see the LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat torn apart in a recent burst pressure test because it helped them learn more about its capabilities.

A video (below) shows the habitat explode when it can no longer handle the huge forces acting upon it.

Read more
NASA axes its moon rover project VIPER
NASA’s VIPER – short for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover – sits assembled inside the cleanroom at the agency’s Johnson Space Center.

NASA’s VIPER -- short for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover -- sits assembled inside the cleanroom at the agency’s Johnson Space Center. NASA

NASA has announced it is scrapping its plans to send a rover to the moon. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, project was intended to search the moon's polar regions for water, but will now be shelved due to budget issues. Originally slated to land on the moon in December 2022, the project had been delayed several times, and the most recent update was that it would not be ready until September 2025.

Read more
How to watch Firefly Aerospace launch 8 NASA payloads tonight
Firefly Aerospace Alpha FLTA005 rocket on the pad.

Firefly Aerospace Alpha FLTA005 rocket on the pad. Firefly Aerospace / Sean Parker

Update: The launch has been postponed again until Wednesday, July 3 at 9:04 p.m. PT.

Read more