After 10 months of flying in space, NASA’s DART successfully impacted its asteroid target, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space
Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact at 7.14 p.m. EDT on Monday
At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defence, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said
“As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we are also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth,” Nelson added
As a part of NASA’s overall planetary defence strategy, DART’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet
DART targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter
It orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth
The mission’s one-way trip confirmed NASA can successfully navigate a spacecraft to intentionally collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact
The investigation team will now observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that DART’s impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos