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Writer's pictureThe Big Magazine Staff

NASA’s DART spacecraft successfully alters Dimorphos asteroid orbit

By The Big Magazine Staff


NASA has made history today! For the first time, a spacecraft NASA's Double Asteroid Rendezvous Test (DART) probe has crashed into a small asteroid 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth.


NASA’s DART spacecraft successfully alters Dimorphos asteroid orbit

On Monday the U.S. space agency has dubbed the mission as the world's first planetary defense test. The mission's aims was to change the orbit of the asteroid dubbed, Dimorphos — around its larger asteroid parent Didymos enough to prove humanity could deflect a dangerous asteroid if one was headed for Earth.


"As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success," said Elena Adams, DART's mission systems engineer here at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), after the successful crash. "I think Earthlings should sleep better. Definitely, I will."


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