NASA spent $325 million on a spacecraft, then ordered it to crash into an asteroid at 22,000 km/h. It worked. In September 2022, DART shifted the orbit of asteroid Dimorphos by 32 minutes — the first time humanity ever changed the motion of a celestial body.
DART photographed its own death, streaming one image per second, live. Its very last photo is broken: the spacecraft was destroyed while the image was still transmitting, so only a sliver ever reached Earth. This December, ESA’s Hera spacecraft arrives at the crash site to inspect the damage.
Dimorphos was never a threat to Earth — that’s exactly why it was chosen for the test.
Footage: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL (DART broadcast, DRACO images). Hubble view: NASA/ESA/STScI. Public domain / used per NASA media guidelines.
Narration is AI-generated. Not produced or endorsed by NASA.
Music: “Signal To Noise” by Scott Buckley (scottbuckley.com.au) — CC-BY 4.0
#space #NASA #DART #asteroid #planetarydefense
Credit to : HurizonSpace