A DART mission spacecraft deliberately crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26., which is the satellite of a larger asteroid called Didymos. In this way, he managed to move it, reducing its orbit in 32 minutes, said the head of the space agency, Bill Nelson, at a press conference.
This is “a watershed moment for planetary defense and a defining moment for humanity,” he said.
It would already have been “considered a great success if (the spacecraft) had only lowered orbit in about 10 minutes. But it actually reduced it by 32″, he added. With this mission, “we show the world that NASA is serious about defending this planet.”
Dimorphos, located about 11 million kilometers from Earth at the time of impact, is about 160 meters in diameter and does not represent any danger to our planet.
This unprecedented “planetary defense” mission, Called DART (dart, in English), it is the first to test this technique and has allowed NASA to train for the assumption that an asteroid someday threatens to hit Earth.
The entrance NASA spacecraft managed to divert asteroid trajectory in Earth defense test was first published in diary TODAY.
