NASA mission launched one million kg of rock into space. Completing a historic test of humanity’s ability to prevent a celestial object from killing life on Earth. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor successfully hit its target, the space asteroid Dimorphos, at 7:14 p.m. Eastern Time, ten months after blasting off from California on its groundbreaking mission (2314 GMT).
According to the space agency, more than 2 million pounds (1 million kilos) of asteroid rocks and dust have been thrown into space. Scientists estimate that there was enough material to fill six to seven rail carriages.
“The team is using that data – as well as new information on the composition of the asteroid moonlet and the characteristics of the ejecta, gained from telescope observations and images from DART’s ride-along Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) contributed by the Italian Space Agency – to learn just how much DART’s initial hit moved the asteroid, and how much came from the recoil,” NASA said in a press release.
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