hurtling toward earth, how would you be able to change its course and save humanity? overnight the space agency launched a first of its kind mission to figure out just that. we ll get more from cnn s kristen fisher. reporter: good morning, paula and christine. it really does sound like the sequel to the movie armageddon. but instead of a killer asteroid being destroyed by a bomb with the help of bruce willis and beben affleck, they are using something called kinetic deflection. that s the scientific way of saying this dark spavcecraft is on a kamikaze mission to push it off course. here is nasa administrator bill nelson. it may be the way to save planet earth if there s ever an inbound big asteroid that could really challenge our existence