It wasn't that long ago that the farthest distance anyone could see was in a ship's crow's nest with a telescoping spyglass. Now we can do this:
NASA's DART mission to ram a kinetic impactor into a harmless asteroid went perfectly yesterday, resulting in the desired destruction of the spacecraft. And as views from Earth showed, the effects of the impact weren't subtle.
The 1,340-pound spacecraft plowed into Dimorphos, a small moon around asteroid Didymos, at 7:14 p.m. ET on Monday, following a 10-month journey to the binary asteroid system. DART's onboard DRACO camera captured stunning POV images as it sped toward the asteroid at speeds reaching 14,000 miles per hour (22,500 kilometers per hour).
The views from the doomed spacecraft were indeed amazing:
But the views from home were arguably even more so:
The purpose of this experiment, in case you weren't aware, was to test whether we can sufficiently destabilize an asteroid's trajectory to the point that we can re-direct potentially catastrophic bodies away from Earth.
So NASA may have just figured out a major planetary defense system while also giving us a great show in the process. Not too shabby!
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