Crashing a rocket straight to an asteroid might feel like science fiction, but it’s not. NASA recently launched its latest space mission and it features a very radical idea that you might have already heard about in movies. DART, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is a real-life space mission by NASA wherein it hopes to crash a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into an asteroid named Dimorphos.
Seeing as this had already happened in one of his movies before, Michael Bay couldn’t help but get cheeky.
Michael Bay jokes that his film inspired NASA
Michael Bay has produced and directed some of the most commercially successful films of all time. His signature formula of high-octane action films filled with explosions and special effects is almost always a guaranteed draw at the global box office. Case in point, the Transformers movie franchise has grossed nearly $5 billion across 6 films, making it one of the most financially successful film series of all time.
With that said, moviegoers know that Michael Bay isn’t concerned about scientific facts. Anyone watching his films knows that the things that happen in his movies will never happen in real life – until now.
While no one’s accidentally discovered a Transformer yet, NASA’s DART mission is very similar to the plot of Armageddon and Bay is aware of this. The filmmaker couldn’t help but poke fun at NASA’s latest space mission. In an interview with TheWrap, Bay joked how his Bruce Willis-led flick inspired NASA before explaining that he’s glad NASA is doing something about the lethal asteroids.
Bay is right. NASA needs to treat these asteroids with more urgency. It’s only a matter of time before one finds itself careening towards our lovely planet. We should always prepare for that eventuality.
There is a difference between DART and Armageddon though. In the Michael Bay film, NASA flies oil riggers up in space so that they can drill a hole inside an asteroid and drop a nuclear weapon inside it. Otherwise, the asteroid will fall straight to Earth. On the other hand, DART is a mere test mission and NASA specifically chose Dimorphos because it did not pose any threat to our planet and that it was close enough for Earth-based telescopes to measure the impact data.
Speaking of asteroids threatening the planet, this is the exact premise of Netflix’s upcoming star-studded comedy film, Don’t Look up. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio in a movie directed by Adam McKay. Don’t Look Up is scheduled to premiere on December 24. You can watch the trailer here.
