NASA Announces Plan For Spacecraft To 'Accidentally' Bump Into Sexy Astroid, Mission Named MEETCUTE

WASHINGTON, D.C.—After floating around the milky way solo, NASA’s DART hopes to make its upcoming collision with asteroid Dimorphos look natural and serendipitous.

“We’ve been trying to help our girl DART hit that for years,” admitted Dr. Sheena Hamilton, head of planetary defense at NASA, while sifting through a stack of Nora Ephron scripts. “It takes a team of the world's top mathematicians and astrophysicists years to devise thousands of precise calculations for these two to run into each other, so it’s hard to make their meet-cute feel like Notting-Hill-level spontaneous. In space, there are no cute bookstores or rogue runaway dumpsters, so we had to be creative to get this hunk of an asteroid’s attention.”

Planetary Geologist and Dimorphos’ comical-stoner best friend Carl Portman is confident that if they can get DART to bump into Dimorphos, it will have a positive impact on the asteroid.

“I love the guy, but he’s always smashing nubile space pebbles with daddy issues. Even minor planets have to grow up and develop rings and moons eventually, you know? He’s been just hurtling aimlessly through space for so long, that we’re worried about him doing something self-destructive. DART is so elegant and put-together, she’s his total opposite. I think if they can hit it off, DART is the kind of partner who could get him to change his ways. She can fix him."

After her third cosmopolitan, Hamilton confessed that the set-up is in part meant to prevent the asteroid from crashing into planet earth.

“I’m her friend too but, between you and me, Earth’s a hot mess. I don’t want Dimorphos pulled into her drama.”