NASA on Tuesday said its historic planetary defense mission was successful after a spacecraft that purposefully smashed into a tiny asteroid called Dimorphos last month altered its orbit by 32 minutes.
At a press conference, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) team explained that before the impact, Dimorphos orbited a larger asteroid called Didymos in 11 hours and 55 minutes. After the strike, astronomers observed the orbital period is now 11 hours and 23 minutes.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson noted that the DART mission captured the attention of the entire world and “felt like a movie plot.”
“But this was not Hollywood,” Nelson said. “We showed the world that NASA is serious as a defender of the planet.”
The DART spacecraft struck Dimorphos, an asteroid that weighs about 5 billion kilograms and is roughly 7 million miles from Earth, on Sept. 26 at more than 14,000 miles per hour.
The spacecraft launched into space in November, so its impact completed a 10-month journey.
DART’s success earned a round of applause from NASA officials and members of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory team, who had worked together on the program for years.
While Dimorphos never posed a threat to Earth, DART served as a key test to deflect a potential future threat to the planet. DART marks the first time humanity has ever hit another object in space with a kinetic strike.
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NASA says asteroid mission was successful, altered orbit by 32 minutes https://t.co/BNN52KacQs pic.twitter.com/poM2kBQIHV
— The Hill (@thehill) October 11, 2022
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