This is CBS I and the World. I'm John Bachelor. Hotel Mars episode n. David Livingston, Dr. Space of the Space Show is here and we're off to the asteroids around the solar system, especially the near-Earth

object asteroids and comets, that now and again are exciting in a Hollywood movie.

What if? However, now there is a are exciting in a Hollywood movie, What If.

However, now there is a mission underway from NASA

to answer some of the What If question.

Many years ago, there was a spectacular movie about landing on an asteroid

and making an exciting conclusion by detonating something that steered the

asteroid away from the earth.

Well, we can't deliver an exciting Bruce Willis landing on an asteroid, but we can deliver

Andy Rivkin, who is our idea of a Hollywood star because he is leading us to the mission

Dart mission which is underway right now about an asteroid and a theory that someday an asteroid would be perceived risking a threat to Earth

that was the risk was too high we had to intervene in some fashion.

And a very good evening to you. Thank you very much for this.

You are the imagination I need to understand why Dart and how Dart works.

You're headed to an asteroid that is a binary.

The rendezvous will be in September of 2022.

The spacecraft, there's a beautiful picture of the spacecraft on a NASA site.

The spacecraft is going to be sacrifices, going to give up its life for mankind for Earth. What is it intended to do? What do you hope to learn?

Good evening to you, Andy. Good evening, thank you for having me. So the idea, the problem with asteroid impacts is that two things have to happen.

The asteroid orbit has to intersect the orbit of the Earth and the Earth are scheduled to be in the same place at the same time.

That's the problem, right? That's when you have a problem.

So the way to avoid that is to make sure that they don't arrive at the same place at the same time.

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