On September 26 (local time), a spacecraft launched by NASA crashed into an asteroid. Around ten months ago, the United States space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a $344 million spacecraft under a mission codenamed Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) with an aim to intentionally crash it on an asteroid. The idea was to test a unique defence technology, and the event finally took place on Monday.
The space agency crashed the spacecraft into the binary asteroid system Didymos with an aim to test a kinetic impactor technology. The idea was to test the defence system that could be used to save Earth from a potential life-threatening asteroid in the future. The spacecraft was travelling at the speed of 24,000 kilometres per hour when it hit Dimorphos, a moonlet of the Didymos asteroid system, and slightly changed the orbit of the asteroid.
As per experts, the impact would be enough to move the asteroid to a slightly tighter orbit around other space rocks. The experiment demonstrated that in future if an asteroid with the potential to cause severe harm to the planet heads towards the Earth, there will be a fighting chance of diverting it away.
Several cameras and telescopes were monitoring the impact, including James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble telescope.
NASA shared a live feed of the spacecraft camera. At the beginning of the video, a companion asteroid appears as a point of light. At 1 hour 23 minutes into the video, the target asteroid appeared. As the spacecraft headed towards the asteroid, it became larger in size. At 1 hour 38 minutes, it started to look like an asteroid and at 1 hour 44 minutes into the video, the impact could be seen.
The spacecraft was equipped with a single instrument, a camera. It was sued for navigating, targeting and initiating the final action. It will take a few weeks or more for the scientists to see if the experiment was successful.
The asteroid that was hit by the spacecraft
Dimorphos is an asteroid around 9.6 million kilometres away from Earth. It is the twin of a 2,500-foot asteroid named Didymos. Didymos was discovered in 1996. Dimorphos, on the other hand, is 525 feet across and located close to the parent body.