The American space agency NASA crashed a small spacecraft directly into an asteroid, a 14,000-mile-per-hour collision designed to test whether such technology could someday be deployed to protect the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet with catastrophic impact.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos about 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from Earth at about 23:00 GMT on Monday.
“At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defense, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth.”
The target of DART was Dimorphos, an asteroid moonlet that has a small body of about 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. This moonlet orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid called Didymos. While neither of the asteroids constituted a threat to Earth, this demonstration would help in determining how to deflect space rocks with a risk of impacting Earth in the future.
NASA demonstrated the test from the mission operations center outside Washington, DC through a live stream which showed images taken by DART’s own camera as the cube-shaped “impactor” vehicle, careered into Dimorphos, an asteroid roughly the size of a football stadium.
“Impact confirmed for the world’s first planetary defense test mission,” said a graphic that appeared on the live stream.
The mission’s one-way trip confirmed that the US space agency can successfully direct a spacecraft to collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a technique called the kinetic impact.
Planetary Defense – a unifying human effort
According to the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, Thomas Zurbuchen, the defense of Earth is a “globally unifying” effort that impacts everyone living on this planet.
“Now we know we can aim a spacecraft with the precision needed to impact even a small body in space. Just a small change in its speed is all we need to make a significant difference in the path an asteroid travels.”