If Monday Night Football tackles aren’t exciting enough, NASA engineers have a much bigger collision planned this Monday at 7:14pm ET. That’s when one of their spacecraft is expected to ram into an asteroid. The first-of-its-kind test is a defensive measure to save humanity from Littlefoot’s fate, if and when that becomes necessary.

The $325 million Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) kicked off last fall, when the spacecraft that’s currently hurtling toward an asteroid was launched. Now, the 1,260-pound spacecraft is cruising along at nearly 15,000 mph on the final leg of its journey to crash into an 11 billion-pound asteroid moonlet called Dimorphos. The impact will be like “running a golf cart into a Great Pyramid,” planetary scientist Nancy Chabot said.

The purpose: To slightly alter Dimorphos’s orbit around a larger asteroid, Didymos, because engineers think changing a celestial body’s trajectory could be the best way to keep it from hitting Earth. So no, DART won’t make the sci-fi trope of blowing an asteroid into a million pieces a reality, but the crash is expected to form a small crater in Dimorphos and shoot about two million pounds of debris into space.

And don’t worry, Dimorphos is being targeted because it is not a threat to Earth. In fact, NASA has determined that there is no known asteroid large enough to threaten Earth with a “significant chance” of crash-landing here within the next century.

DART serves a secondary purpose: It could lead to a better understanding of how the solar system was formed, since an asteroid is “a fossil of the early solar system,” NASA scientist Katherine Calvin said.

Looking ahead…telescopes around the world and space should see a bright flash upon impact, but determining whether DART successfully altered Dimorphos’s course could take weeks. NASA said there’s less than a 10% chance its spacecraft misses its target.—JW

Iran gets its own protesters into the mix. Protesters in Iran took to the streets this week after a 22-year-old woman died while in custody of the morality police, and in a move that’s unlikely to de-escalate the situation, state-organized counterprotesters took to the streets yesterday. Pro-government marchers called for rioters to be put to death. Meanwhile, the US backed the original protests earlier in the week by putting new sanctions on the morality police and allowing US tech firms to boost Iran’s internet after the government shut it down.

More Covid travel restrictions nixed. Get your passport ready, because traveling to Asia is about to get easier—Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan all recently announced they were ending strict policies aimed at keeping Covid at bay (that were rough on their economies). Hong Kong and Taiwan will no longer require new arrivals to quarantine in hotels, while Japan will begin to allow individual tourists into the country. The last major holdout: China, which is sticking by its stringent “zero Covid” policy.

Hurricane Fiona bears down on Canada. After knocking out power in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and dousing Bermuda with heavy rains, Hurricane Fiona continued its path toward Canada. The storm has the potential to be historic for the region, which is rarely in the path of hurricanes. “It’s going to be a bad one,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday.

Britain’s been considered a major world economic power since at least the reign of Queen Victoria, but you wouldn’t know it by how global financial markets reacted to the budget the UK released yesterday. All of a sudden it’s starting to look a whole lot like an emerging market.

How did we get here?

The budget included major tax cuts for high earners and scrapped a planned hike in corporate taxes. It also spelled out just how much the government plans to spend to subsidize energy bills: £150 billion.

And no offense to newly installed PM Liz Truss, but the markets reacted to the bigger-than-expected package like they don’t quite trust the British government to handle its financial situation:

• Investors couldn’t sell off short-term government bonds fast enough, pushing rates way up. Borrowing costs on five-year bonds had their largest ever one-day rise.
• The British pound fell more than 3% against the dollar to the lowest it’s been since 1985.

This combo of soaring bond rates and plunging currency is usually what countries without sound economic governance experience—not wealthy nations like the UK, signaling major concerns over public debt and inflation.

What now? All eyes are on the Bank of England, which before the budget dropped said that a recession had already begun. The central bank is now expected to raise rates even more aggressively.—AR

Ford execs have had a tough week that is wrapping up with more bad news: Their trucks are naked. The automaker said yesterday it can’t get enough blue oval “Ford” name badges, which is delaying the delivery of some vehicles (mainly its Ford F-Series pickups), according to the Wall Street Journal.

Word on the street is Tribar Technologies, one of Ford’s past badge suppliers, had to slow operations last month after releasing chemicals into its local sewer system in Michigan. Ford and the supplier declined to comment on whether there’s any connection.

Car nametags are just the latest speed bump in Ford’s supply chain woes. On Monday, the company said supply chain-flation is hitting harder than expected and it’s spending an additional $1 billion this quarter in supplier costs.

Other parts also remain hard to get. Ford anticipates that by the end of next week, storage lots will be filled with up to 45,000 vehicles that aren’t ready to be sold because they still need parts, primarily semiconductor chips. Some of those lots are already so full, you can see the massive inventory surplus from space.—MM

Stat: Albert Pujols connected on two home runs last night to become just the fourth player in MLB history to hit 700 home runs. He joins Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, and Babe Ruth in the ultra-exclusive club.

Quote: “We shouldn’t always equate fun with money.”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai essentially told employees at a company all-hands that they really shouldn’t get their hopes up for this year’s holiday party. The tech giant has been tightening its belt…er jogger drawstrings in recent months with measures like severely limiting employee travel.

Read: One art collector’s wild quest to prove he had a real Lucian Freud. (New Yorker)

Weekend conversation starters:

• How do they make fake tattoos on actors look real?
• What’s the best way to get rid of all that trash in the ocean?
• Why does every teen movie protagonist want to go to Yale?
• If a Mediterranean island offered you $15,000 to move there, would you do it?

Brisket szn: Here are some recipes for anyone trying to impress their Rosh Hashanah table. Shana tova!

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Brew crossword: Embrace sweater weather in today’s autumn-themed 15x15 crossword. Play it here.

Open house

Welcome to Open House, the only newsletter section that is ready to call it a day on big city livin’. We’ll give you a few facts about a listing, and you try to guess the price.

Today’s listing is in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a city that got its first Chipotle in 2020. This 3,403 square-foot home is the epitome of “Midwest rich.” Amenities include:

• 4 beds, 3 baths
• Arches. Everywhere.
• Basement bar and wine cellar

How much to be closer to Mount Rushmore than you probably are right now?

Make the most of your workday using our Excel Digital Guides + Dictionaries. Shop now for Excel excellence.

‍ Everyone is talking about “quiet quitting” right now. But at this office, we have dogs that rise and grind. Watch the CEO react to quiet quitting TikToks.

Start your weekend catching up on Morning Brew’s podcasts.

• For people who nerd out on business: Business Casual
• For advice on spending habits and budgeting: The Money with Katie Show
• For inspiration: Imposters