It was a rocket launch from the Central Coast with a lofty goal. Researchers wanted to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid could alter its path enough to prevent a meteorite from smashing into Earth.
The craft launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base successfully hit the target asteroid last month. Now, scientists say preliminary data shows the deliberate crash into the asteroid did a better job than expected in diverting it.
"Two weeks ago, NASA made history once again," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "We conducted humanity's first planetary defense test."
Nelson said it could be the story line of a Hollywood blockbuster, but it really happened.
"DART...it felt like a movie plot...but this was not Hollywood."
For the first time in history, humanity altered the path of a celestial body.
Nelson talked about how they were able to tell the spacecraft’s impact affected the asteroid’s path. He said telescopes tracking the asteroid noted than the duration of its orbit changed, which told them it affected its direction.
Scientists say a tiny deflection in an asteroid’s path could make a big difference if it happens well in advance of a potential collision with Earth.
Nancy Chabot is the DART Program Coordination Leader with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. The lab designed, and built the spacecraft for NASA.
"It just gave it a small nudge," said Chabot. "But, if you wanted to do this in the future, you would have to do it years in advance. Warning time is essential."
The researchers say why we know the experiment worked, there is still a lot of data to be reviewed.
Tom Statler is the DART Program Scientist.
"We've been imagining this for years, and to have it finally be real is really quite a thrill," said Statler. "It really is just the beginning of the analysis of this really rich data set we are getting from the DART mission."
While there is much more work to be done, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says the rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base supported a very important theory: A spacecraft launched at an asteroid potentially threatening to hit Earth can be deflected.
"If an Earth threatening asteroid was discovered, and we can see it far enough away, this technique could be used to be deflect it." said Nelson.
Researchers emphasized that the asteroids involved in the test never posed a threat to Earth. And the one which was deflected in the experiment wasn’t big enough to pose a global threat. But, they say one that size making a direct hit could potentially level a large city.
NASA is currently tracking about 27,000 asteroids. None are known to pose a current threat, but researchers also caution there are many more which remain undetected, and that we need to remain alert.
