NASA has successfully crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in a planetary defense test. But when will we know if the impact has altered the asteroid’s path?
It’s official — we’re smarter than the dinosaurs.
NASA has successfully slammed a spacecraft into an asteroid in a historic mission that could one day save Earth from hazardous space rocks spotted coming our way.
Monday’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was exactly that — a test — targeting a harmless asteroid, called Dimorphos, some seven million miles from Earth.
Targeting the 530-feet-wide rock and then crashing DART into it at 4,000 miles per second is already a major achievement, but the mission will only be considered a total success if the impact has succeeded in altering the course of the asteroid’s orbit around a larger asteroid, Didymos.
