NASA's DART spacecraft strikes asteroid in key planetary defence test

In an extraordinary rehearsal for the day when a rock threatens Earth, a NASA spacecraft successfully crashed into an asteroid at breakneck speed on Monday (Sept 27).

The spacecraft, named DART, slammed into an innocuous asteroid at 22,500 kph, causing a gigantic slam to occur at 9.6 million kilometres away. The DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test.

The spectacle was observed through telescopes from Earth and space pointed towards the same location in the sky. The primary goal of the collision was to change the asteroid's orbit. The scientists, however, anticipate that this crash will also create a crater and launch streams of boulders and dirt into space, AP reported.

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The $325 million mission was the first attempt to move any natural object in space.

Dimorphos, the name of the 160-metre asteroid, means "twin" in Greek. It is actually a moonlet of Didymos, a rapidly spinning and five times larger asteroid.

The DART spacecraft, which was launched last November and developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, was the size of a vending machine. Engineers for the mission yelled with excitement when DART hit the asteroid.

A little satellite trailed a few minutes later to capture images of the collision. The Italian Cubesat was launched from DART two weeks ago.

Scientists insisted that Dimorphous would not be broken by the DART. The asteroid weighed approximately 5 billion kilos, whereas the spacecraft was just 570 kg.

As per NASA, much fewer than half of the projected 25,000 near-Earth objects in the lethal 140-metrerange were found.

As it stands, less than one per cent of millions of smaller asteroids have the potential to cause widespread destruction.

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