NASA hits a spacecraft with an asteroid in the first test of its kind.. video

NASA hits a spacecraft with an asteroid in the first test of its kind - Photo courtesy of NASA

A NASA spacecraft intentionally collided with an asteroid in the first defense test of its kind.

The goal is to protect the planet from a potential collision with what NASA calls a near-Earth object, whether asteroids or comets, that could come close to our orbit.

Shortly after the collision at 2314 GMT on Monday, NASA tweeted an "impact success" where "a spacecraft the size of a vending machine successfully collided with the asteroid Demorphos, which is the size of a football field" and poses no threat to Earth.

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection (DART) mission was the first to attempt to push a dangerous object off course by direct experiment, space mission manager Thomas Zurbuchen said before the collision.

NASA created the Planetary Defense Coordination Office in 2016 to provide early detection of threats from near-Earth objects of sufficiently large size, ranging from about 30 to 50 meters, and tracing their tracks.

In the images transmitted by the spacecraft's camera to Earth, the asteroid Demorphos first became visible as a bright spot about an hour before the collision, then grew in size and eventually became visible with surface detail and shading, until the camera was destroyed on impact.

Then cheers erupted at NASA's Control Center, as the team applauded and hugged each other.

Even just before the collision, it was not certain whether the spacecraft, which was traveling at about 6.6 kilometers per second, would actually collide with the asteroid.

And the real science work begins after the impact, NASA scientist Laurie Glaese said.

The researchers must now investigate whether Demorphos's orbit of about 12 hours has changed as a result of the probe's impact and if so, to what extent.

Astronomers are not currently aware of the near-Earth objects that could threaten the Earth, but the asteroid that collided about 66 million years ago and left a huge crater in the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, many believe, led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The Dart vehicle, which was launched from a California base on a Falcon 9 rocket last November, has a mass of 610 kilograms and measures 1.8 meters by 1.9 meters by 2.6 meters.

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