'We have impact.' Watch the moment a NASA spacecraft collides into an asteroid 7 million miles away, with Dart plowing into the small space rock at 14,000 mph.
, the vending machine-size Dart — short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test — navigated to its target using new technology developed by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the spacecraft builder and mission manager.
“Woo hoo,” exclaimed Adams, a mission systems engineer at Johns Hopkins. “We’re seeing Dimorphos, so wonderful, wonderful.” Scientists insisted Dart would not shatter Dimorphos. The spacecraft packed a scant 1,260 pounds , compared with the asteroid’s 11 billion pounds . But that should be plenty to shrink its 11-hour, 55-minute orbit around Didymos.
Planetary defense experts prefer nudging a threatening asteroid or comet out of the way, given enough lead time, rather than blowing it up and creating multiple pieces that could rain down on Earth. Multiple impactors might be needed for big space rocks or a combination of impactors and so-called gravity tractors, not-yet-invented devices that would use their own gravity to pull an asteroid into a safer orbit.
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