Boom! DART Crashes Into Asteroid
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) crashed into the surface of an asteroid called Dimorphos at over 14,000 miles per hour. Researchers are hoping that the collision will change the asteroid’s orbit, speeding it up just a tiny bit (we won’t know how successful it was for a little while).
Neither Dimorphos, nor its larger companion, Didymos, pose any danger to Earth, but the experiment is designed to test whether or not a similar impact could make a difference if scientists ever discovered an asteroid that posed an imminent threat to life on Earth.”
Via https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/26/23371372/watch-nasa-dart-collision-asteroid
And everyone was watching. We’ve got visuals from the LICIACUBE cubesat that went along for the ride with DART, as well as from both Webb and Hubble!