The Associated Press reports:
A spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles away succeeded in shifting its orbit, NASA said Tuesday in announcing the results of its save-the-world test. The Dart spacecraft 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 (kilometers).
It took days of telescope observations to determine how much the impact altered the path of the 525-foot (160-meter) 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 hoped to shave off 10 minutes but NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the impact altered the asteroid’s orbit by about 32 minutes.
Read the full article.
NASA says a spacecraft succeeded in shifting an asteroid’s orbit in a test to protect Earth from future threats. The space agency attempted the first test of its kind two weeks ago to see if in the future a killer rock could be nudged out of Earth’s way. https://t.co/9xC1VJWuKH
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 11, 2022
This just in: The #DARTmission impact is confirmed to have changed the orbit of moonlet Dimorphos around its asteroid Didymos.
For the first time ever, humans changed the motion of a celestial object. More details: https://t.co/aQj8N7fnuV pic.twitter.com/NLR6AqEcaO
— NASA (@NASA) October 11, 2022
US space agency Nasa calls itself a serious “defender of the planet” after hailing success of mission to deflect the path of an asteroid https://t.co/o827haeGsV
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) October 11, 2022
BREAKING: “Today, NASA confirms that DART successfully changed the targeted asteroid’s trajectory,” NASA chief says.
Read more: https://t.co/77gINOmRwl pic.twitter.com/tFmDkA6KBf
— ABC News (@ABC) October 11, 2022