The spacecraft named DART (double asteroid redirection test), which was about the size of a vending machine propelled into the rock 11 million kilometres from Earth at quarter past eleven GMT on the 26TH. Dimorphos, the target asteroid, was used as an experimental site for the world's first planetary defence test. Although Dimorphos was similar in size to the Great Pyramid of Giza, it was deemed a small moonlet which orbited around a larger asteroid named Didymos, 'twin' in Greek. The two asteroids were not a direct threat but do pass close to Earth, therefore they were chosen for the first experiment.
The first thing that came to mind when I heard about the NASA program, was the film “Armageddon” starring Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis. In the film, they dramatically attempt to save the world from impending doom by destroying an asteroid “the size of Texas”, with Aerosmith intensely playing in the background. While the film was fictional with terrible effects and bad acting, the idea that one day the earth could face a life-threatening collision with a space rock isn’t so fictional.
The aim of DART was not to explode Dimorphos but to disrupt its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos and therefore change its course. By flying at 14,000 miles per hour, DART hit Dimorphos, only changing its velocity by “a fraction of one percent”, yet that’s all that was needed to impact the motion of the celestial body and alter its course. The 26th of September was a ground-breaking day, where unimaginable technology was tested for the first time, the kind of technology the dinosaurs wish they could have had.
