- NASA's first planetary defense mission is announced to be a success
- The spacecraft shifted the orbit asteroid Dimorphos and shortened it by 32 minutes - the initial goal was just 10 minutes
- The event was tasked at seeing if NASA could nudge an asteroid heading to Earth off its orbit in order to save our planet from a catastrophic impact
NASA's hit on Asteroid altered its orbit
[MSN] The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, carved a crater into the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, hurling debris out into space and creating a cometlike trail of dust and rubble stretching several thousand miles. It took consecutive nights of telescope observations from Chile and South Africa to determine how much the impact altered the path of the 525-foot asteroid around its companion, a much bigger space rock....
.Before the impact, the moonlet took 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its parent asteroid. Scientists had anticipated shaving off 10 minutes, but Nelson said the impact shortened the asteroid's orbit by 32 minutes. |