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What’s happened: NASA is celebrating the occurrence of humanity’s archetypal trial of a planetary defence system: crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid successful bid to alteration its orbit. NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, oregon DART, was intentionally smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos astatine 7.14pm ET past night, spelling the extremity to a palmy 10 period mission.
A tiny camera mounted connected DART livestreamed the spacecraft’s dependable advancement towards the 160 meter-wide asteroid, located astir 6.8 cardinal miles from Earth, backmost to controllers based astatine the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The squad cheered arsenic Dimorphos grew person and closer, earlier the livestream chopped retired connected interaction with the asteroid. The onslaught was “basically a bullseye,” DART ngo systems technologist Elena Adams said. You tin watch the livestream for yourself to spot the nonstop infinitesimal DART struck Dimorphos.
Why it matters: The mission, which was launched successful November past year, demonstrates a mode for humanity to support itself from asteroids. While Dimorphos itself had not been connected people to clang into Earth, the task demonstrates NASA’s quality to deflect akin asteroids successful the future. Researchers judge the clang could person shortened Dimorphos’ orbit by astir 10 minutes, which is capable to marque a important quality to the way an asteroid travels. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called the ngo an “unprecedented occurrence for planetary defense.”
What’s next: The adjacent measurement is to survey the asteroid utilizing telescopes connected Earth to corroborate that DART’s interaction altered the asteroid’s orbit astir a larger asteroid called Didymos.
Read more: Learn much astir the DART spacecraft, and the incredibly precise mathematics required to guarantee it deed the asteroid successful this fascinating feature.
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