Big success for US space agency Nasa: The collision with a probe changed the direction of an asteroid’s motion for the first time. About two weeks after the impact, analyzes showed that the celestial body’s orbit around another asteroid was different from the previous one, NASA said. The time for one orbit before the impact of the “Dart” probe was 11:55 hours – now, on the other hand, a time of 11:23 hours has been measured. A change of 73 seconds had already been set as the minimum target.
At a speed of about 6.6 kilometers per second, the vending machine-sized cube-shaped “Dart” probe collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, which is roughly the size of a football stadium, at the end of September. From the roughly $330 million asteroid defense mission, NASA hopes to discover how Earth could be protected from approaching celestial bodies. However, Dimorphos posed no threat to humanity.
NASA: Get serious about defending the planet
“This mission shows that NASA is trying to be prepared for whatever the universe throws at us. NASA has shown that we are serious about defending the planet,” said Space Agency chief Bill Nelson. He called the mission’s success a “watershed moment” in protecting humanity from an asteroid impact. months, the impact of the collision will now be investigated. In 2024, the European Space Agency Esa’s “Hera” mission is due to start for even more detailed research.
Dart has provided intriguing data on the properties of asteroids and the effectiveness of an impact in defending Earth, said mission director Nancy Chabot. “The Dart team continues to work on this rich dataset to fully understand this first test of asteroid deflection planetary defense.”
NASA and researchers around the world have been grappling with the question of how to defend against an asteroid for many years. An asteroid impact about 66 million years ago, for example, is considered by scientists to be the leading theory as to why the dinosaurs went extinct. Scientists currently don’t know of any asteroids that could be heading straight for Earth anytime soon – but researchers have identified around 27,000 asteroids close to our planet, around 10,000 of them with a diameter of over 140 meters.