NASA spacecraft successfully crashes into asteroid in defence test
NASA spacecraft successfully crashes into asteroid in defence test
Washington, Sep 27 : After flying in space for 10 months, a NASA spacecraft successfully crashed into an asteroid on Tuesday in a first-of-its-kind mission to test whether space rocks that might threaten Earth in the future could be nudged safely out of the way, the US space agency said.
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The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defence technology demonstration — targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 160 metres in diameter.
Dimorphos orbits a larger 780-metre asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth.