The NASA DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission is expected to collide with the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26. DART will be the first mission to test a technique that might be used to divert asteroids that are dangerous to Earth.

Over the years, Hollywood has produced hundreds of killer-space-rock films, such as Armageddon (1998), which brought Bruce Willis to Cape Canaveral for filming, and Don’t Look Up (2021; starring Leonardo DiCaprio and an all-star ensemble).

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Here’s a list of 5 movies about asteroids crashing into earth: 

1) Armageddon (1998)

Most meteor-impact jokes you hear today are based on this film, particularly any references to calling in Bruce Willis to save the Earth. The film depicts Harry Stamper (Willis) and his oil rig crew  being hired as astronauts by NASA. Their goal is to drill into an asteroid the size of Texas and detonate a bomb to shatter it before it hits Earth.

Grace Stamper (Liv Tyler), a member of Willis’ crew, begins a passionate love affair with him in the meanwhile (Ben Affleck). We won’t go into the specifics of their overly sentimental conversations of love over animal crackers, but please be aware that the science, to put it simply, stinks. Highlights include the most clichéd depiction of a Russian astronaut ever on the former space station Mir, seeing two space shuttles launch simultaneously only a few hundred feet apart, and occasionally seeing Earth-scale gravity on a tiny asteroid.

2) Meteor (1979)

The trailer for this film is worth the three minutes it takes to watch. The narrator begins describing the impending asteroid strike in panicked terms, using dramatic sounds of an asteroid whizzing through space .

This film, starring Sean Connery , depicts the United States and what was then the Soviet Union putting aside Cold War tensions and cooperating to stop the threat.

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3) Don’t Look Up (2021)

Don’t Look Up is a clever, unapologetically brash satire about a future America so consumed with celebrity worship, mind-numbing infotainment, social media popularity, and political gamesmanship that it refuses to take the planet’s impending destruction seriously. We’re not talking about climate change here, but the parallel is clear. Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) has irrefutable proof that an unprecedentedly massive comet will wipe out Earth in exactly six months and fourteen days. The probability of “planet extinction” is set at 99.78%.

4) Apollo 18 (2011)

This film follows the final mission of NASA’s Apollo programme, Apollo 18, as the title suggests. The team believes they are on a routine mission until they land and discover strange tracks all over the moon. This is The Blair Witch Project, but in space. It’s suspenseful and makes you shudder.

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5) Deep Impact (1998)

Among the many actors in this film are Robert Duvall, Elijah Wood, and Tea Leoni. The premise of this film is that a massive comet is heading straight for Earth, and a team of astronauts and scientists must destroy or deflect the comet in order to save the planet.