Nasa spacecraft crashes into as
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft headed straight into asteroid Dimorphos on Monday, September 26, 2022, in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth.
The galactic slam occurred at a harmless asteroid 9.6 million kilometers away, with the spacecraft named Dart plowing into the space rock at 22,500 kph.
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.
Telescopes around the world and in space aimed at the same point in the sky to capture the spectacle. Though the impact was immediately obvious
— Dart's radio signal abruptly ceased — it will take days or even weeks to determine how much the asteroid's path has changed.
The $325 million mission was the first attempt to shift the position of an asteroid or any other natural object in space.
Monday's target: a 160-meter asteroid named Dimorphos. It's actually a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid five times bigger that flung off the material that formed the junior partner.
The pair have been orbiting the sun for eons without threatening Earth, making them ideal save-the-world test candidates.
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