After 10 months of flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration – successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space.
As a part of NASA’s overall planetary defense strategy, DART’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered.
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.
#Hubble #astronomy #astrophysics #physics #blackholes #stephenhawking #venus #alberteinstein #einstein #jwst #jupiter #Mars #saturn #jameswebbspacetelescope #jameswebb #eventhorizon #einstein #telescope #cosmology #space #planets #outerspace #spacelover #astronomylover #science #nasa #esa #nasajpl
