Marc 'The Cope' Coppola

Marc 'The Cope' Coppola

Marc "The Cope" Coppola is a native New Yorker who can be heard on a station near you!

 

It Worked! NASA’s DART Mission Changed Motion Of Asteroid!

In one of those extreme cases of Life Imitating Art and Science Fiction:

NASA says the spacecraft that intentionally slammed into an asteroid successfully changed its

course. As mentioned before, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, was the first

attempt to change the direction of a celestial object to see if the method could be used to

protect Earth from a future deadly collision.

How well did it work? Yes! Land-based telescopes have determined the impact of the DART

spacecraft with asteroid Dimorphus changed its orbit around a larger asteroid by more than 30

minutes. A future mission will visit the double-asteroid system to further study the impact

area.

“This result is one important step toward understanding the full effect of DART’s impact with

its target asteroid” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at NASA

Headquarters in Washington says. “As new data come in each day, astronomers will be able to

better assess whether, and how, a mission like DART could be used in the future to help

protect Earth from a collision with an asteroid if we ever discover one headed our way.”


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