Test to smash asteroid off course with DART spacecraft was a success, Nasa says

The space vehicle collided with the asteroid Dimorphos last year but results were announced on Wednesday

The first images that show the moment Nasa’s Dart spacecraft crashed into an asteroid have been released. Photo: Italian Space Agency / Nasa

Nasa’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) spacecraft targeted a binary asteroid system and smashed into Dimorphos – which orbits a larger asteroid, Didymos, to see if it can shift it slightly off course. Photo: Italian Space Agency / Nasa

The pictures were captured by Italian Space Agency’s LiciaCube, a small cube satellite, that was released by the Dart spacecraft on September 11. Photo: Italian Space Agency / Nasa

Viewers across the world got a point of view of the spacecraft the moment it crashed into the asteroid on September 27, 2022, at a speed of 24,000km an hour — fast enough to travel from New York to Paris in 15 minutes. Photo: Nasa

The collision on Tuesday was part of a planetary defence test by the US space agency, and the asteroid posed no threat to Earth. Photo: Nasa

A Nasa mission to hit an asteroid with a spacecraft — intending to knock the object off course and find a way of protecting Earth from disaster — has proven surprisingly successful, scientists said on Wednesday.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was conducted on September 26, with the impact being captured by the Hubble telescope.

“All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. After all, it’s the only one we have,” said Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson at the time of the impact.

“This mission shows that Nasa is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us,” he said.

But it is only now, five months later, that scientists have the results of the test: the asteroid’s trajectory has been altered, after being hit with the 544kg spacecraft that was travelling over 20,000kph.

The orbital period of the Dimorphos asteroid — which never posed a threat to Earth — was changed by 33 minutes, Nasa said, leading to hopes that in future, DART or a similar project could protect us from deadly projectiles capable of destroying entire cities or wiping out all life on the planet.

“I cheered when DART slammed head on into the asteroid for the world’s first planetary defence technology demonstration, and that was just the start,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at Nasa headquarters in Washington.

“These findings add to our fundamental understanding of asteroids and build a foundation for how humanity can defend Earth from a potentially hazardous asteroid by altering its course."

Google celebrated the success of DART by launching a search engine Easter Egg — an inside joke or cultural reference displayed on Google following a search prompt — that shows an asteroid crashing when a user searched "Nasa DART".