For the first time in human history, NASA intentionally crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid on Monday.
The DART spacecraft crashed into the asteroid called Dimorphos, a twin meteor to Didymos, and was live-streamed at 5:14 p.m. MST Monday. It was a success, colliding with the asteroid at 13,421 miles per hour and within 6.8 million miles of earth.
The impact can be seen starting at 1:16:00 minutes into the video below provided live by NASA.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, aka DART, spacecraft launched 10 months ago in hopes to have the world’s first test for planetary defensive capabilities. Scientists won’t know for a few weeks if the crash had the intended result of changing the asteroid’s trajectory, but scientists are optimistic that the change will show what humanity is capable of with future planetary defensive potential in the worldwide effort to learn more.
In the event there is a cataclysmic asteroid event — which is not coming anytime soon, according scientists, as there are no asteroids currently on course to impact with Earth — NASA was looking for a way to prevent impact. Humans currently don’t have the capability to set an asteroid off course away from the planet, and NASA hopes to change that with this preliminary testing.
Scientists said Dimorphos, which is around 525 feet across, was chosen for its size comparably posing a threat to earth, but said the trajectory would likely change by only 1%. That may not sound like much, but it could possibly change the moon’s orbital period with Earth. Its twin, Didymos, is more than 2,560 feet across.
The event was captured by another spacecraft provided by the Italian Space Agency. It was specifically designed to follow along and capture the moment of impact. Space-based telescopes also captured the moment from afar, including the Hubble and Webb telescopes as well as the Lucy mission.
The data collected on the project will not only contribute to designing newer planetary defense strategies, but also to learn the force it takes to shift the orbit of a near-planetary asteroid with the potential to collide into Earth.
For more info about the DART mission or other things NASA has been doing lately, click here.
