DART asteroid collision mission successful! Here’s what NASA said

The world’s first step towards planetary defence is successful, NASA announced late Tuesday. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) where a spacecraft was intentionally made to smash into an asteroid has brought back positive results.

NASA has said that the experimental spacecraft has altered the orbit of asteroid Dimorphos as per the mission’s objective.

The American space agency collected and analysed data over two weeks and found that the impact of DART had shortened the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos around its parent asteroid Didymos by 32 minutes.

Before the impact’s desired result, Dimorphos took 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit around Didymos. This has now been changed to 11 hours and 23 minutes. NASA had smashed the DART spacecraft into the asteroid on September 26.

Since then, astronomers have been measuring the change in time of Dimorphos’ orbit using telescopes. The measurement comes with a margin of uncertainty of around plus/ minus 2 minutes.

Why has NASA said the DART mission is successful?

Ahead of the collision, NASA said that success would mean that the period of orbit would change by a minimum of 73 seconds. The data from initial analysis suggests that this benchmark has been bettered by over 25 times. 

“This result is one important step toward understanding the full effect of DART`s impact with its target asteroid,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division was quoted as saying. 

The assessment will improve in the coming days with more data which will help scientists understand how to save Earth in case of an asteroid hurtling towards us for an impending collision. 

DART collided with the asteroid at a speed of around 22,530 kilometres per hour (14,000 miles per hour). Several tons of asteroidal rock called "ejecta" was displaced and launched into space by the impact.

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(With inputs from agencies)