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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.