Never-Before-Seen Spacecraft Collision Yields Unexpected Surprises In 2022 NASA embarked on a bold experiment to see if they could change an asteroid's velocity by smacking it with a ballistic probe – kind of like hitting it with a hammer. This experiment was to test a potential technique to someda
This illustration depicts NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft prior to impact at the Didymos binary asteroid system. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribbenembarked on a bold experiment to see if they could change an asteroid’s velocity by smacking it with a ballistic probe – kind of like hitting it with a hammer. This experiment was to test a potential technique to someday deflect an asteroid on a collision course to Earth.
The primary objective of DART, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, was to test our ability to alter the asteroid’s trajectory as it orbits its larger companion asteroid, Didymos. Though neither Didymos nor Dimorphos poses any threat to Earth, data from the mission will help inform researchers how to potentially divert an asteroid’s path away from Earth, if ever necessary.
“The DART impact happened in a binary asteroid system. We’ve never witnessed an object collide with an asteroid in a binary asteroid system before in real time, and it’s really surprising. I think it’s fantastic. Too much stuff is going on here. It’s going to take some time to figure out,” said Jian-Yang Li of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
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