Watching NASA's spacecraft impact an asteroid was 'exciting beyond words,' Dr. Tom Statler told IE in an interview. Find out more at 🚀
While it's tempting to draw a collective sigh of relief, the situation's not quite so simple, and NASA warns that there's still much more work to be done.
Still, Statler added that "Long before DART was launched, NASA defined a successful orbital period change of Dimorphos as 73 seconds or greater, based on the smallest change that could be reliably measured from Earth. This means that even accounting for the plus or minus 2 minutes of uncertainty, DART surpassed this minimum benchmark by more than 25 times.
"DART’s successful kinetic impact represents an important step toward a working planetary defense method," Statler continued, "but there are more steps needed before we get there. In the short term, there is still a lot to learn about the efficiency of momentum transfer from DART’s impact, which the DART investigation team is continuing to study."
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