NASA confirms that its DART spacecraft nudged the asteroid Dimorphos into a new orbit
Humans have for the first time proven that they can change the path of a massive rock hurtling through space. NASA has announced that the spacecraft it slammed into an asteroid on 26 September succeeded in altering the space rock’s orbit around another asteroid — with better-than-expected results.
“This is a watershed moment for planetary defence, and a watershed moment for humanity,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. Both sets of observations agreed that DART’s impact knocked Dimorphos tens of metres closer to its companion and cut its cycle time to around 11 hours and 23 minutes. Saving Earth Scientists will continue to observe the asteroid couplet in the months to come, hoping to understand more about the shape of Dimorphos’s new orbit and whether DART’s impact introduced a ‘wobble’ to the asteroid. With the help of images from LICIACube — the Italian Space Agency’s probe that trailed DART and then flew by to capture the impact — scientists hope to learn more about the properties of the debris ejected.
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