No, this isn’t the plot line of a Hollywood blockbuster starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
NASA simply intentionally slammed a spacecraft, going 13,421 miles per hour, into an asteroid 6.8 million miles up within the sky (that is 28 occasions the gap of the moon to the Earth).
You may watch all of it right here.
That is all a part of NASA’s $300 million Double Asteroid Redirection System Take a look at (DART). Asteroid collision is a really actual risk to humanity, and NASA needs to experiment with methods to re-direct any asteroid that could be hurtling in direction of Earth sooner or later.
Astronomers selected an asteroid named Dimorphos as their goal. Dimorphos, which is concerning the measurement of the Washington monument, isn’t any direct risk to Earth. Nevertheless it’s about the identical measurement as asteroids that would endanger the planet. DART’s mission is to deflect the asteroid off its course in order that if it have been really heading in direction of Earth, it might miss its goal.
Within the “fishbowl” waiting for #DART to affect Dimorphos and provides it a nudge! pic.twitter.com/ubMjxQAnG9
— Invoice Nye (@BillNye) September 26, 2022
How Did the DART Mission Go?
The DART spacecraft made affect with Dimporphos right now at 7:15 pm ET.
Not like motion pictures reminiscent of Armageddon, by which NASA nuked an asteroid to smithereens, the DART mission featured no mind-boggling explosions however fairly the picture of a tiny gray speck within the sky coming into focus because the spacecraft moved nearer to Dimorphos.
The ultimate picture from the spacecraft’s cockpit confirmed Dimorphos coated with boulders, after which the dwell feed disappeared because the spacecraft divebombed into the asteroid.
NASA will assessment pictures and knowledge over the subsequent few days to see if the experiment labored in shifting Dimorphos. However for now, they’re celebrating the mission, which has been within the works since 2015, as a smashing success.
