A NASA spacecraft rammed an asteroid at blistering speed Monday in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth.
This illustration made available by Johns Hopkins APL and NASA depicts NASA's DART probe, foreground right, and Italian Space Agency's LICIACube, bottom right, at the Didymos system before impact with the asteroid Dimorphos, left. DART is expected to zero in on the asteroid Monday, Sept. 26, 2022, intent on slamming it head-on at 14,000 mph. The impact should be just enough to nudge the asteroid into a slightly tighter orbit around its companion space rock.
Monday’s target: a 525-foot asteroid named Dimorphos. It’s actually a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid five times bigger that flung off the material that formed the junior partner.The pair have been orbiting the sun for eons without threatening Earth, making them ideal save-the-world test candidates.
Scientists insisted Dart would not shatter Dimorphos. The spacecraft packed a scant 1,260 pounds , compared with the asteroid’s 11 billion pounds . But that should be plenty to shrink its 11-hour, 55-minute orbit around Didymos.
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