New Delhi: NASA on Monday successfully guided a spaceship to strike an asteroid seven million miles away in order to deflect its orbit, in an experiment aimed at testing the human race’s ability to foil an asteroid from colliding with earth and wiping out life in future.
Ten months after lifting off from California, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor hit space rock Dimorphos successfully. The asteroid’s surface was clearly visible in the last few minutes as DART approached it at roughly 14,500 miles (23,500 km) per hour.
In the final seconds, the camera froze, indicating impact causing signal to be lost.
“We’re embarking on a new era, an era in which we potentially have the capability to protect ourselves from something like a dangerous hazardous asteroid impact,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division.
Dimorphos, a 530-ft asteroid, orbits Didymos. Both asteroids posed no threat to earth but the experiment was carried out to test capability to foil a real threat from an asteroid in future.
IMPACT SUCCESS! Watch from #DARTMIssion’s DRACO Camera, as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully collides with asteroid Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium and poses no threat to Earth. pic.twitter.com/7bXipPkjWD
— NASA (@NASA) September 26, 2022
