The refriderator size spacecraft hit a small asteroid and chaged its path….
‘Mission Accomplished’…
NASA took aim at an asteroid last month, and on Tuesday, the space agency announced that its planned 14,000-mile-per-hour collision with an object named Dimorphos made even more of a bull’s-eye shot than expected.
That winning strike was the first of its kind. “We conducted humanity’s first planetary defense test,” said Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA, during a news conference, “and we showed the world that NASA is serious as a defender of this planet.”
In November 2021, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, mission, shooting a refrigerator-size spacecraft toward a small asteroid. Scientists had created DART to destroy it.
On Sept. 26, the spacecraft smashed into a small asteroid, which defenders of Earth hoped would adjust its orbit. This strategy could protect the planet from incoming asteroids or comets. One small shift in a space rock’s trajectory could, someday, mean one giant sigh of relief for humankind, if it pushes an asteroid off a collision course with Earth.
The mission’s target, Dimorphos, was a diminutive space rock, just more than 500 feet wide. It was and still is harmless, posing no risk to Earth.
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The spacecraft not only connected with Dimorphos, it altered the space rock’s orbit, shortening its trip around a larger asteroid by 32 minutes.
That time shift was exactly what the DART mission aimed to accomplish…