Page 5 - Asteroid Camera News Today

NASA's probe slammed into a targeted asteroid on Sept. 26 to demonstrate a kinetic impact strategy as a potential means of shielding the Earth from a disastrous collision in future.

The craft traveled 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) and hit just 56 feet (17 meters) off center.

For the mission, NASA attempted to move an asteroid in space as part of the agency’s planetary defense strategy.

While the asteroid, Dimorphos, was not at risk of impacting Earth, this demonstration could determine how to deflect space rocks that could pose a threat to Earth in the future.

The DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, launched 10 months ago.

NASA will be providing a live coverage of the impact.

NASA says DART’s planetary defense & asteroid collision test would help earth deflect an asteroid, should one ever happen in the future.

On Monday (Sept. 26) at 7:14 p.m. EDT (2314 GMT), if all goes well, NASAs DART spacecraft will crash into the asteroid Dimorphos in an attempt to alter the moonlets trajectory.

It’s innovation in the name of planetary defense: NASA’s DART mission aims to test the idea of colliding with an asteroid to deflect it from Earth.

If an asteroid was hurtling towards Earth, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, could we stop it? That's what NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (or DART) is trying to work out.