NASA successfully crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid at 15,000 miles per hour Monday night in a test run to prepare for when a massive space rock actually threatens Earth.
NASA practiced saving the Earth by ramming the vending-machine-sized spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to prove it can deflect planet-threatening space rocks.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) collided with a 530-foot-wide interplanetary body named Dimorphos at 7:14 p.m. in an event that was live streamed by the space agency on its website. The room of NASA scientists and engineers erupted in cheers and applause as the spacecraft made impact.
“We have impact!” one of NASA news editor’s Samson Reiny said in the live video. “A giant leap for humanity in the name of planetary defense.”
The space rock — which is some 6.5 million miles from Earth — holds no threat to the planet, but is a perfect subject to test a new system that could knock a dangerous asteroid off course, scientists say.
DART smashed into Dimorphos and successfully knocked it out of its 12-hour orbit, scientists say. The spacecraft — which is the size of a compact car — was destroyed, but the collision was documented by a small satellite called LICIACube that trailed behind.
The mission aimed to “evaluate the effectiveness of this mitigation approach and assess how best to apply it to future planetary defense scenarios,” according to the space administration.
Bruce Betts, the chief scientist at the nonprofit Planetary Society, reportedly said the mission is “a big step forward for humanity.”
“The thing that makes this natural disaster different is that if we do our homework, we can actually prevent it,” he told NBC News. “That’s a huge difference compared to a lot of other large-scale natural disasters.”
If an asteroid was hurtling toward Earth, knocking the rock just slightly off course would be enough to save the planet, Betts told the network.
“It depends on the size of the object and how much warning time you have, but you do indeed just need to change the orbit a little bit,” he said.
Dimorphos, which orbits an even larger rock called Didymos, is far smaller than the 12-kilometer asteroid that created an impact that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, according to NASA.
An asteroid would have to be larger than 1 kilometer to threaten civilization on Earth, and such an impact happens once every few million years, NASA estimates.
The $325 million mission will likely only benefit future generations, as no known asteroid larger than 450 feet is projected to hit the Earth over the next century, according to the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. However, only 40% of the space rocks that could pose a threat to Earth during that span have been detected so far.
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