The much-anticipated NASA’s DART spacecraft successfully crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos on Monday at 7:14 ET.
Reportedly, hours prior to the impact, the asteroid Dimorphos wasn’t even visible from the spacecraft.
However, viewers from earth suddenly noticed the Didymous past as DART went directly towards Dimorphos. In the next instant, the screens were filled with boulders and then it went bright red, consequently losing the signal. Authorities in the mission room concluded that DART had reached its destination.
Elena Adams, DART Mission Systems Engineer commented that they saw the asteroid in their field of view for the first time. The engineer further added that they were aware of where they are going to hit even though they had no idea about the shape of the asteroid.
IMPACT SUCCESS! Watch from #DARTMIssion’s DRACO Camera, as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully collides with asteroid Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium and poses no threat to Earth. pic.twitter.com/7bXipPkjWD
— NASA (@NASA) September 26, 2022
Telescopes across the world were used to check the impact that the planned crash had on the movements of Dimorphos.
The DART mission was NASA’s first practical planetary defense experiment.
The goal of the test was to check if humans would be capable of intentionally redirecting the path of an asteroid if someday one comes headed towards our planet.
Lori Glaze, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division commented that this mission marks humankind embarking on a new era of potentially possessing the capability of protecting ourselves from something like an asteroid impact.
With the completion of the DART mission, the new science is just beginning.
