NASA Plays Chicken With an Asteroid and Celebrates a ‘Smashing’ Success

On September 26, NASA was able to successfully crash spacecraft into an asteroid. Now, it’s time to determine the outcome of this ‘impactful’ mission.

Arturo Weiss

Wednesday, September 28, 2022 at 08:55 AM ET

Verified

NASA’s DART spacecraft and a small asteroid named Dimorphos had a date with destiny this week. [Courtesy: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL]

Key Takeaways:

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully impacted the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022.
The mission was an experimental test of a planetary defense strategy, aiming to demonstrate that a "kinetic impact" could alter an asteroid's orbit.
DART intentionally targeted Dimorphos, a moonlet of the larger asteroid Didymos, neither of which poses a threat to Earth, serving as a safe proving ground for the technique.
While a full assessment is ongoing, NASA anticipates the impact will successfully shorten Dimorphos' orbit, proving the potential of this method to deflect a threatening asteroid.

See a mistake? Contact us.

On September 26, NASA celebrated the loss of a spacecraft’s signal. While communication loss would usually be a cause for concern, this expected signal disconnect resulted from a planned impact between the spacecraft and an asteroid. Why would we want to smash a perfectly good space vehicle into a stronger asteroid? To show that such an impact could alter the space rock’s orbit just enough to avoid a collision with our planet.

This game of galactic chicken made global headlines and wrote yet another page in NASA’s ongoing galactic narrative, which includes more suspense than an Agatha Christie thriller. Best of all, it was vividly captured via an onboard camera offering an up-close and personal view of the asteroid right before impact.