Bullseye: A NASA spaceship on Monday struck an asteroid 7 million miles away in order to deflect its orbit, succeeding in a historic test of humanity's ability to prevent a celestial object from devastating life on Earth.
DART's final look at the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos captured 1 second before impact. Impact occurred during transmission of the image to Earth, resulting in a partial picture. Minutes after impact, a toaster-sized satellite called LICIACube, which already separated from DART a few weeks ago, was expected to make a close pass of the site to capture images of the collision and the ejecta – the pulverized rock thrown off by the strike.
Finally, a full picture of what the system looks like will be revealed when a European Space Agency mission four years down the line called Hera arrives to survey Dimorphos' surface and measure its mass, which scientists can currently only guess at.Very few of the billions of asteroids and comets in our solar system are considered potentially hazardous to our planet, and none are expected in the next hundred years or so.
If it had missed, NASA would have another shot in two years' time, with the spaceship containing just enough fuel for another pass.
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