Enlarging an image
An American spacecraft launched for an experiment to change the orbit by colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid on the Earth's collision course accurately collided with the target asteroid 'Dimorphus' in deep space about 11 million km from Earth today (27th).
NASA announced that the 'twin asteroid orbital correction experiment' spacecraft became a 'kinetic shock body' at 8:14 am on the 27th (Korean time) and successfully collided with Dimorphos at a speed of 22,000 km/h. I did.
Dymorphus has a diameter of 160 meters.
NASA broadcasted the crash process live from an hour before the crash, releasing images transmitted by the spacecraft in real time through YouTube TV, etc.
Whether Dymorphus' orbit has changed as a result of the Dart's collision will be confirmed by ground and space telescope observations over the next several weeks.
This is the first time that humans have tested a strategy to defend the Earth from an asteroid impact on an actual asteroid, and it is expected that the Earth defense strategy will leave the laboratory and become a reality.
(Photo = NASA TV image capture, Yonhap News)