NASA’s Dart mission crashes into asteroid Didymos

NASA’s Dart mission ship successfully slammed into the tiny asteroid Dimorphos at 7:14 p.m. Monday, the space agency announced.

It will take days or weeks to detect any changes in the orbit of the asteroid, which was chosen as the guinea pig in Earth’s defense plan from rogue rocks.

The spectacle was witnessed worldwide via numerous telescopes aimed at the 15,000 mph impact point 6.8 million miles away. Dart’s radio signal ceased, but that was the only solid evidence of impact, astronomers said.

It’s part of a $325 million mission, a relatively small investment given the havoc and damages that could be unleashed if an actual asteroid were to strike Earth.

“No, this is not a movie plot,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson tweeted earlier in the day, with a pre-recorded video. “We’ve all seen it on movies like ‘Armageddon,’ but the real-life stakes are high.”

It’s humankind’s first attempt to shift a naturally occurring space object. Dimorphos, a 525-foot, 11 billion-pound hunk of boulder, is a mini-moon consisting of material discarded by Didymos, an asteroid that’s five times bigger and whirls super fast. The mission’s goal is to divert the asteroid’s orbit around its parent by 10 minutes.

“The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program to help them know what was coming, but we do,” NASA senior climate adviser Katherine Calvin told AP. A mega asteroid that hit 66 million years ago is thought to have rendered the dinosaurs extinct.

While no asteroids have been spotted that could be a threat to Earth, the possibility exists, and scientists want to be prepared. The successful impact had scientists crowing.

“We’re embarking on a new era of humankind, an era in which we potentially have the capability to protect ourselves from something like a dangerous hazardous asteroid impact,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, in a statement. “What an amazing thing. We’ve never had that capability before.”

With News Wire Services