The 14,000-mph impact is designed to test whether a future threatening asteroid can be nudged off course.
Seven million miles from Earth, a NASA spacecraft crashed head on into a tiny asteroid Monday at a mind-boggling 14,000 mph, the first real-world test of humanity's ability to nudge a threatening body off course before it could crash into Earth.
Images from DART's camera as it closed in on the double asteroid Didymos and its small moonlet Dimorphos.Covering the final 1,000 miles in about four minutes, DART's camera showed the target growing larger and larger, from a dim point of light until it filled the entire field of view seconds before impact while traveling seven times faster than the bullet from an assault rifle.
Images from DART's camera as it closed in on the double asteroid Didymos and its small moonlet Dimorphos.And at that moment, after years of planning and a 10-month voyage from Earth to the Didymos-Dimorphos system, flight controllers at APL, where the DART spacecraft was managed, erupted in cheers and applause.
The Virtual Telescope Project, which offers time on robotic telescopes to professional and amateur astronomers alike, posted that showed a dramatic brightening from presumed clouds of rock and dust blown into space around Dimorphos. Researchers expect the crash to shorten the asteroid's orbital period by about 10 minutes, but it will take a few days to a few weeks for telescopes around the world and in space, including the Hubble and James Webb space observatories, to make the measurements needed to nail down the number.
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