NASA’s DART was a test mission to see if the technique, known as kinetic impactor, would give the necessary ‘nudge’ to an asteroid and alter its course by a desired amount.
- After studying the two bodies for nearly 10 days, NASA announced that the course of the smaller asteroid has indeed been altered a little: initially, the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos took 11 hours and 55 minutes.
- After the impact, a 32-minute alteration in its orbital period has taken place — it is now 11 hours and 23 minutes only.
- The reason for this test is to learn how to use the kinetic impactor technique to ‘nudge’ earth-bound asteroids out of the way, years before impact. This is not a last-minute effort.
- Kinetic impaction involves sending one or more large, high-speed spacecraft into the path of an approaching near-earth object.
- This could deflect the asteroid into a different trajectory, steering it away from the Earth’s orbital path.
- Earlier, NASA had demonstrated on a small scale with the Deep Impact mission of 2005.
