A NASA spacecraft on Monday rammed an asteroid at blistering speed in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for if a killer rock one day menaces Earth.
The slam occurred at an asteroid 11.3 million kilometers away, with the spacecraft named Dart plowing into it at 22,500kph.
Scientists expected the impact to carve out a crater, hurl streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, alter the asteroid’s orbit.
Photo: AFP
“We have impact,” Mission Control’s Elena Adams announced.
Although the impact was immediately obvious, it might take a couple of months to determine how much the asteroid’s path was changed.
The US$325 million mission was the first attempt to shift the position of an asteroid or any other natural object in space.
“As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success,” Adams later told a news conference. “I think Earthlings should sleep better. Definitely, I will.”
Monday’s target was a 160m asteroid named Dimorphos. It is a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid five times bigger.
The pair are in orbit around the sun, making them ideal test candidates.
Launched in November last year, the craft navigated to its target using new technology developed by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
Dart’s onboard camera, a key part of this smart navigation system, caught sight of Dimorphos barely an hour before impact.
With an image beaming back to Earth every second, Adams and other ground controllers in Laurel, Maryland, watched with growing excitement as Dimorphos loomed larger in the field of view alongside its bigger companion.
Within minutes, Dimorphos was alone in the pictures.
The last image froze on the screen as the radio transmission ended.
Flight controllers cheered, hugged one another and exchanged high fives.
“Normally, losing signal from a spacecraft is a very bad thing, but in this case, it was the ideal outcome,” NASA program scientist Tom Statler said.
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