The Dart mission managed to move the asteroid Dimorphos by shortening its orbit by 32 minutes. A major advance in protecting Earth from extraterrestrial bodies.
The US space agency managed to deflect an asteroid from its trajectory by slamming a spacecraft onto its surface during an unprecedented test mission in late September, designed to teach humanity how to protect itself from a possible future threat, NASA said on Tuesday with , October 11th.
The mission ship Dart intentionally crashed into its target, the asteroid Dimorphos, which is the satellite of a larger asteroid called Didymos. The NASA device thus managed to move it and shorten its orbit by 32 minutes, Space Agency chief Bill Nelson said during a news conference. This is “a turning point for the defense of the planet and a turning point for humanity,” he said.
An unprecedented mission
It would have been “considered a great success if it (the vehicle) shortened the orbit by only about 10 minutes.” But he actually cut it by 32 minutes,” he added. “With this mission, Nasa has proven that we mean business as defenders of the planet,” he said. Dimorphos, which was about 11 million kilometers from Earth at the time of the impact, is about 160 meters in diameter and poses no threat to our planet.
If the goal remains relatively modest compared to the catastrophic scenarios of sci-fi movies like Armageddon, this unprecedented “Planetary Defense” mission dubbed Dart is the first to test such a technique. This allows NASA to train if one day an asteroid threatens to hit Earth.
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