Elon Musk Wants NASA-SpaceX Mission To ‘Avenge Dinosaurs’

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX has launched a spacecraft with NASA on a planetary defence mission called DART that is set to collide with an asteroid to see if it can change its direction. The mission, launched on Wednesday, is on a collision course with a non-threatening asteroid, and aims to change the trajectory of the asteroid. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has now wished luck to NASA in a very familiar fashion.

Musk, who is known for his quirky humour and direct demeanour, has urged the mission to avenge the devastation an asteroid once caused on the Earth and led to the extinction of dinosaurs. “Avenge the dinosaurs,” Musk said in a tweet, where the SpaceX CEO wished the mission his luck. Musk was referring to the extinction of dinosaurs that took place millions of years ago when an asteroid crashed into the Earth eliminating the whole species from the planet.

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Musk was responding to a tweet from NASA, which explained the mission. “Asteroids have been hitting the Earth for billions of years. Now, we begin to make it stop,” NASA had said. To this, Musk responded with a subtle “Avenge the dinosaurs!!”

The DART mission was launched by NASA aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from a base in California. Its mission is to hit an asteroid to test the technology for defending Earth against any potential incoming asteroid or comet hazard. The asteroid that it is meant to collide with is a moonlet named Dimorphos and is approximately 530 feet in diameter. It is currently not a threat to the Earth but is still a Near-Earth Object.

The objective of the DART mission is to slightly change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be accurately measured using on-ground telescopes on Earth. The spacecraft will hit Dimorphos between September 26 and October 1 next year.

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