New Delhi: In his humourous response to NASA’s tweet on launching Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Thursday called for avenging a long-extinct group of reptiles.


The tweet comes after NASA on Wednesday launched DART, the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards.


ALSO READ | EXPLAINED: NASA DART Mission Is All Ready To Hit Its Target. Know All About It

After NASA tweeted: “Asteroids have been hitting the Earth for billions of years. Now, we begin to make it stop”, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had a funny response to share: “Avenge the dinosaurs!!”.






The crypto enthusiast is known for his quirky tweets, which sometimes even lead to the digital currencies facing a fluctuation in value.


As for NASA’s DART mission, it was launched on Wednesday at 1:21 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, a press release on the space agency’s website informed.


Notably, Elon Musk-owned SpaceX is the launch services provider for the DART mission.


DART will show that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it – a method of deflection called kinetic impact. The test will provide important data to help better prepare for an asteroid that might pose an impact hazard to Earth, should one ever be discovered, NASA stated.


Meanwhile, as always, netizens had some more humorous reactions to share on Elon Musk’s tweet. Here are some of them:


















Elaborating about the DART mission, NASA stated that its one-way trip is to the Didymos asteroid system, which comprises a pair of asteroids. DART’s target is the moonlet, Dimorphos, which is approximately 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. 


“The spacecraft will intercept the Didymos system between Sept. 26 and Oct. 1, 2022, intentionally slamming into Dimorphos at roughly 4 miles per second (6 kilometers per second). Scientists estimate the kinetic impact will shorten Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos by several minutes. Researchers will precisely measure that change using telescopes on Earth. Their results will validate and improve scientific computer models critical to predicting the effectiveness of the kinetic impact as a reliable method for asteroid deflection,” NASA informed in its statement.