NASA Successfully Altered Asteroid's Orbit By Slamming Spacecraft Into It

NASA announced that its mission to alter the course of an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into it was a success. NASA has been reviewing the data from the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and found that the orbit of the asteroid, named Dimorphos, had been slowed by 32 minutes.

NASA launched the spacecraft and crashed it into Dimorphos at a speed of more than 14,000 miles per hour to test the viability of redirecting the path of an asteroid that is on a collision course with Earth.

"It was expected to be a huge success if it only slowed by 10 minutes," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. "It was a bullseye."

Officials said that astronomers will continue to assess new data as it comes in from the asteroid to better understand the physics of the collision.

"This result is one important step toward understanding the full effect of DART's impact with its target asteroid," said Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "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."