NASA Spacecraft Deliberately Crashes into Asteroid in World-First Trial
NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid on Monday, September 26, in a world-first mission to trial technology that would protect Earth from potential asteroid collisions.
According to NASA, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is the first-ever mission “dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact.”
The mission targeted Dimorphos, a small “moonlet” roughly the size of a football stadium, which is orbiting a larger asteroid named Didymos.
This footage, streamed live on Monday evening shows the DART spacecraft colliding with Dimorphos. Credit: NASA via Storyful
Video transcript
- [? All ?] you see those individual boulders there. You can see shadows--
- All right. Almost 30 seconds before impact.
- --of the various rocks on the surface.
- It's amazing guys. Oh, my goodness. Look at that. Unbelievable.
- Moment of truth.
- Yeah. Looks to me like we're headed straight in.
- Oh my gosh.
- Oh, Wow.
- 10.
- Yeah.
- Nine.
- Oh, my goodness. Eight
- Yeah.
- Seven.
- Wow.
- Six, five, four, three, two, one.
- Oh my gosh.
[APPLAUSE]
- Oh, wow.
- Awaiting visual confirmation.
- All right. We got it?
- Waiting.
- Waiting.
- And we have impact.
- And we got it.
- A triumph for humanity in the name of planetary defense.
- Fantastic. Oh, fantastic.
- What-- What a moment. Very few words can really capture this moment. This is beautiful to watch.