![]() “If a 160-meter asteroid hits a city, it will a bad day for that city, leaving a crater of more than a kilometer, but it won't change the whole planet,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator at NASA's Science Mission Directorate told Deutsche Welle in 2021. In comparison, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was 6.2 miles wide. The asteroid is about 500 feet in diameter. The DART spacecraft has been hurtling toward its target since November 24, 2021, when it began its 10-month mission to Dimorphos. ![]() IMPACT SUCCESS! Watch from #DARTMIssion’s DRACO Camera, as the vending machine-sized spacecraft successfully collides with asteroid Dimorphos, which is the size of a football stadium and poses no threat to Earth. and a very important step forward for planetary defense." ![]() Representative Don Beyer from Virginia, who chairs the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, tweeted that the mission was "a historic success. NASA scientists cheered as images were sent back to the ground from the spacecraft, showing in increments its approach and impact with Dimorphos. At the time of the collision, Dimorphos was about 6.8 million miles from Earth. The agency's Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, hit the asteroid Dimorphos at 7:14 p.m. The asteroid poses no danger to Earth, but researchers wanted to test whether this approach is feasible in case of a future threat of impact. But the crash was intentional: NASA meant to alter the flying rock’s trajectory in space. Traveling at 14,000 miles per hour, a NASA spacecraft slammed into an asteroid on Monday evening. ![]()
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