NASA' s DART mission successfully deflected an asteroid

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NASA' s DART mission successfully deflected an asteroid

, author of Debris blasted off of the asteroid Dimorphos as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo: NASA/ESA/STScI/Hubble A NASA mission to change the orbit of an asteroid in deep space successfully deflected its asteroid target, the space agency confirmed today. Why it matters: The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was designed to test the technology needed to throw a dangerous asteroid off-course with Earth if one is ever found. Catch up quick: the small asteroid moonlet Dimorphos on Sept. 26 in a bid to change its path around the larger asteroid Didymos. Tuesday that observations from ground and space-based telescopes found DART's impact changed the orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos, shortening it by about 32 minutes and effectively taking it off its normal course.The test would have been considered a success if it had just changed the orbit of Dimorphos by 73 seconds. It took a couple weeks for scientists to gather enough data to figure out just how much the moonlet's orbit had changed. The big picture: NASA and other space agencies around the world are focused on finding and tracking potentially dangerous asteroids that could impact Earth sometime in the future. "This is a planet wide issue," Lori Glaze, the director of planetary science at NASA, said during a press conference today. "If there were an asteroid that were a threat to Earth, we should all be concerned and we all need to be working together." Scientists are now working to develop the Near Earth Object Surveyor telescope, a space-based observatory that will be able to detect difficult-to-find, possibly dangerous space rocks.That mission, however, has been delayed until 2028 due to a major budget cut to the NASA mission. Go deeper:

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