The test will help scientists learn how to stop catastrophic asteroid impacts.
NASA has intentionally slammed a spacecraft into an asteroid in the first ever test of Earth’s planetary defense system.
The probe's goal was to slow the orbit of Dimorphos around its larger partner — the 1,280-feet-wide asteroid Didymos. NASA will deem the mission a success if Dimorphos’s 12-hour orbit slows by 73 seconds, but the real change could be by as much as 10 minutes. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth. Data that will pour in for weeks to come will tell us how successful that mission was, said Nancy Chabot, Coordination Lead for the DART mission, in a live webcast of the event.
The spacecraft’s camera then snapped the final images of its target — which can be seen here on NASA’s Youtube channel — mere moments before DART made contact. These initial observations will be followed up by the European Space Agency’s Hera mission, which will launch towards Didymos and Dimorphos in 2026 to study the long-term effects of the crash and judge the success of the $330 million mission.
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