'We've been imagining this for years and to have it finally be real is really quite a thrill,' said NASA program scientist Tom Statler.
The impact occurred at 7:15 p.m. ET greeted by cheers from the mission team in Laurel, Maryland. The DART mission, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, launched 10 months ago.A spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles away succeeded in shifting its orbit, NASA said Tuesday in announcing the results of its save-the-world test.
The Dart spacecraft carved a crater into the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, hurling debris out into space and creating a cometlike trail of dust and rubble stretching several thousand miles . It took days of telescope observations from Chile and South Africa to determine how much the impact altered the path of the 525-foot asteroid around its companion, a much bigger space rock.
Neither asteroid posed a threat to Earth -- and still don't as they continue their journey around the sun. That's why scientists picked the pair for the world's first attempt to alter the position of a celestial body.
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Smashing success: NASA asteroid strike results in big nudge'We've been imagining this for years and to have it finally be real is really quite a thrill,' said NASA program scientist Tom Statler.
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