NASA's DART spacecraft isn't long for this world -- and it's going out with a bang.

24, 2021, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test probe has its sights firmly locked on the asteroid Didymos and its tiny companion rock, Dimorphos.

26, DART will careen into Dimorphos at about 14,000 miles per hour.

The mission is designed as a test run for planetary defense with the intention of proving that a deep space collision can alter the orbit of a space rock.

The carefully arranged death dive will destroy the DART and, if all goes to plan, alter the orbit of Dimorphos around its parent Didymos ever so slightly. .

Once DART has been destroyed, ground-based space telescopes will evaluate Didymos and Dimorphos to see just how much the orbit has changed. .

The $308 million spacecraft's lone instrument is the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) and it will be switched on for final dive, taking a photograph every second.

NASA notes that the feed will mostly be black once it switches on, but as the spacecraft approaches, the asteroid pair will come into view