Spacecraft successfully alters asteroid’s path
NASA says DART spacecraft successfully alters asteroid’s path
Taking a page out of science fiction and Hollywood scripts, US space agency aims to prevent collision with Earth.
NASA says it has succeeded in deflecting an asteroid in a historic test of humanity’s ability to stop an incoming cosmic object from devastating life on Earth.
The fridge-sized Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor deliberately smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, pushing it into a smaller, faster orbit around its big brother Didymos, NASA chief Bill Nelson said.
“DART shortened the 11 hour, 55 minute orbit to 11 hours and 23 minutes,” he said. Speeding up Dimorphos’ orbital period by 32 minutes exceeded NASA’s own expectation of 10 minutes.
“We showed the world that NASA is serious as a defender of this planet,” Nelson said.
The asteroid pair loop together around the sun every 2.1 years and pose no threat to Earth, but they posed an ideal test of the “kinetic impact” method of planetary defence in case an actual approaching object is ever detected.
“There is no risk in this case because this was a deliberately chosen target to make sure that this [asteroid crashing on Earth] would not happen,” Yvette Cendes, an astronomer at Harvard University, told Al Jazeera.
DART’s success as a proof-of-concept has made a reality of science fiction.
Astronomers rejoiced in stunning images of matter spreading out thousands of kilometres in the wake of the impact. The pictures were collected by Earth and space telescopes as well as a satellite that had travelled to the zone with DART.
“I grew up watching Armageddon and Deep Impact and all that, and it is amazing to see this stuff become a reality,” Cendes said.
Thanks to its temporary new tail, Dimorphos, which is 160 metres (530-foot) in diameter or roughly the size of a big Egyptian pyramid, has turned into a man-made comet.