Successful asteroid collision by a NASA spacecraft.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft that collided with an asteroid on Monday night, has been successfully tested by NASA.
In this instance, the asteroid Dimorphos, which according to NASA is the size of a football stadium, does not represent a threat to the world.
However, the expedition will aid researchers in testing devices that can avert an asteroid collision and its possibly disastrous effects.
The Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical Navigation will be used by DART to take pictures.
The equipment will allow the spacecraft to navigate itself directly into a collision with the tiny asteroid Dimorphos and provide viewers with the first look of Didymos.
DART was moving at 14,000 mph at the time of contact, which is fast enough to reach the final 4 miles in under a second.
Dimorphos won't be destroyed by the aircraft, although a modified flight path for the space rock was anticipated.
According to Andy Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins APL,"The idea is that asteroid impacts occur when an asteroid's orbit and the Earth's orbit intersect,"
this is our first attempt to sort of take that into our own hands and control our future in that sense.