NASA claimed on Tuesday that a spacecraft that crashed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of kilometers away was successful in changing its orbit. To see if a deadly rock could be pushed out of the way of Earth in the future, the space agency conducted the first test of its sort two weeks ago.
On September 26, the Dart spacecraft cut a hole into the asteroid Dimorphos, spewing debris into space and leaving a few thousand mile-long comet-like trail of dust and debris. To calculate how much the hit changed the path of the 525-foot (160-metre) asteroid around its larger partner, it took days of telescope studies.
Before the collision, the moonlet circled its parent asteroid for 11 hours and 55 minutes. The impact, according to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, changed the asteroid’s orbit by around 32 minutes, contrary to the scientists’ hopes of a 10 minute time reduction.
Nelson stated during a press conference at NASA headquarters in Washington that “this mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the cosmos throws at us.” Given that they are still orbiting the sun, neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth. The two were chosen by scientists to make the first ever effort to move a celestial body in the universe.
