NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which is the world’s first planetary technology demonstration has successfully impacted its target on 07:14pm EDT. The DART Mission Control at the John Hopkins Applied Physical Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland confirmed the agency’s first attempt to move an Asteroid in space.
It was after 10 months flying in space, NASA’s DART mission hit the Asteroid in the first-ever Planetary Defence Test. As mentioned by NASA, “the 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”. The Asteroid Moonlet Dimorphos is a small body just 530 feet in diameter, which orbits a larger, 2560 feet Asteroid called Didymos. When impacted, Didymos and Dimorphos were relatively close to earth but were not posing any threat to Earth.
DART is a $325 Million Planetary Defence Test with began with the DART’s launch in last fall. DART Investigation Team will compare the results of DART’s Kinetic impact with Dimorphos to highly detailed computer simulations of Kinetic impacts on Asteroids.
Read more about NASA’s DART Test here
Read more about DART here
