On Monday night, NASA successfully crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, marking a significant first for planetary defense tactics (and a move straight out of a sci-fi movie).
It is the pinnacle of a $70-million, seven-year NASA experiment known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART.
The spacecraft was launched into orbit in November 2021 on a one-way trip to test the viability of kinetic impact, or, to put it another way, can NASA steer a spacecraft to strike and divert a (imaginary Earth-bound) asteroid?
The results of the test on Monday point to a yes.
It will take around two months before researchers can conclusively say whether the asteroid was indeed sent off course by the craft’s encounter with its intended target, an egg-shaped asteroid called Dimorphos.
However, the mission has been hailed as an unparalleled success by NASA authorities.
According to NASA’s planetary defense chief Lindley Johnson, “DART’s achievement gives a huge contribution to the fundamental toolset we must have to protect Earth from a disastrous asteroid collision.”
This shows that we are no longer helpless in the face of such a natural tragedy.
Dimorphos is not actually hurling at Earth, according to NASA.
The asteroid moonlet is described as a little body with a diameter of about 530 feet that revolves around Didymos, a larger asteroid with a diameter of 2,560 feet. Neither of these asteroids poses a threat to the earth.
Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos is predicted to be shortened by around 1%, or 10 minutes, as a result of the impact of DART, according to NASA.
In order to track those precise readings, researchers will now use ground-based telescopes to observe Dimorphos, which is only 7 million miles from Earth.
To better understand the kinetic impact, they will also zoom in on photographs of the crash and its aftermath.
From Earth, the ATLAS asteroid tracking telescope system captured the following image:
Two weeks before DART’s impact, the Italian Space Agency’s Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids was launched from the spacecraft to take pictures of the impact and “the asteroid’s subsequent cloud of ejected matter,” as NASA describes it.
It continues that those photographs will be downlined to Earth “one by one in the next weeks” because it doesn’t have a huge antenna.
The spacecraft’s instrument, known as DRACO, also took pictures of its surroundings as it sped through the final 56,000 miles of space and into Dimorphos at a speed of about 14,000 miles per hour.
Just a few seconds before impact, its final four pictures were taken.
In the dramatic series, the asteroid progressively fills the frame, going from being a distant mass floating in the dark to revealing its rough surface up close.
Here is a video of it; keep the volume up to see mission control’s response.
The final shot, which was captured around 4 miles from the asteroid and about a second before impact, is obviously blurry and has a large portion of the screen covered in darkness.
According to NASA, DART’s impact took place as that image was being broadcast to Earth, producing a distorted image.
This image of Didymos and Dimorphos was captured by NASA’s DART mission about 2.5 minutes and 570 kilometers before they collided.
Dimorphos as observed by the DART spacecraft 11 seconds before impact, at a distance of around 42 miles.
Before the impact, the DRACO imager on NASA’s DART mission captured this final complete picture of Dimorphos.
It depicts a portion of the asteroid that is about 100 feet across and was photographed two seconds before impact from a distance of around 7 miles.
Dimorphos was photographed for the last time moments before impact.
Since the hit occurred when the photograph was being sent to Earth, it isn’t complete.
